by Ilsa J. Bick
“Rima?” Bode said, as Meme cried, “Last warning!”
“We’re here, we’re stains! Shadows!” Elizabeth shouted. “Tell her, Bode! She has to know, she has to—”
“Not another word!” Starting forward, Meme would’ve swung if Bode hadn’t sprung up to snatch at her waist with his good arm. “How dare you?” Snarling, Meme rounded, jug upraised to strike. “Take your hands off …”
“Then stop!” Bode shouted, his face an inch from hers. “Ain’t there been enough killing?”
“But you do not understand what that is! I am not even certain!”
“Then tell me what ya think.” He gave her shoulder a small shake. “But no more without just cause, no more! We’ve a dead man here and more trouble to come without turning on one another.”
“He’s right. Look, look, it’s okay. I’m going, all right?” Palms still up, Elizabeth shuffled backward. “But I’m no threat to you. Believe me, I’m here to help. I want to help all of you if I can.”
“Oh, and I am supposed to believe that? The panops, Bode, in my right pocket.” Meme slid him a quick sidelong glance. “Take them out.”
Elizabeth reacted to that. “You’ve got panops?”
Meme ignored her. “Bode?”
“What? Why?” It was as if the two girls were talking over him somehow. What the bloody hell was going on? “What do you want with—”
“For God’s sake, will you stop asking so many stupid questions?” Meme snapped. “Get them, quickly, before this … this piece loses its grip!” When he just stood there, she readied the jug for a swing. “You want me to bash its brains in? Get them!”
“Hold on, hold on, all right!” Awkwardly, he slid his left hand from her waist and patted until he found the slit of a pocket. Wriggling his fingers inside, he felt the curve of her hip. Embarrassment fired his cheeks, and he thought, You nob, ya worried about modesty now? “Just give me—”
“No.” A snarl—but not from Meme. Elizabeth had gone rigid, her lips skinning back to reveal teeth that were a murky orange in the light of Weber’s lantern. Her delicate features were harder than he’d ever seen. Her eyes were so wide, the whites shone with a kind of feral brightness, and that golden flaw glittered like a star. “No,” she said again. “Don’t … don’t fight me!”
Was she taking a fit? Odd voice or not, he had to do something. She’d saved his life, for God’s sake. “Elizabeth?” Specs in hand, he started forward. “Are you in—”
“Blast!” Snatching the panops from his slack fingers, Meme dropped the jug and jammed the glasses into place. “I need to see which piece …” She gasped. A hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, dear God, it is true. You really are …”
“Stop!” Back arching, Elizabeth’s head twisted right and left as if trying to break free of invisible hands. “D-don’t fight … let m-me explain it to them! Bode can help!”
“Meme?” There was something very wrong with Elizabeth’s face, Bode thought. It had to be the light or the strange, shimmering air, because it seemed to Bode that her features … glimmered. As if Elizabeth was soft clay and unseen hands were pinching and rearranging the shape of her lips, the angle of her jaw. Or squirmers. His arms stippled with gooseflesh. Like they’re under her skin, burrowing, eating her alive. He actually backed up a step. “Meme, what is it? Is it squirmers? Is she …”
“No,” Meme said.
“B-Bode?” Her features had settled, and it was Elizabeth: truly, this time round. He saw at once that she seemed smaller somehow, and weaker. Her lips trembled. “Oh, Bode, thank God you’re all right. I was so …” Sudden alarm swept her face. “No!” In the cell, her shout echoed back from the walls. “No, please, stay asleep a while longer, just a while …”
“God,” Meme breathed. “What is this?”
“What?” Elizabeth’s entire face seemed to wrinkle, to shift—or maybe, again, it was the air. Elizabeth glimmered and then she was someone else again. “What is what?” Blinking, she cast a look round, then spied the mess on the mattress. “Oh.” Lifting a hand to her lips, she threaded an arm over her stomach. She looked ill. “Oh God, oh shit. Did I do that? I did that?”
It’s as if she’s just come awake. Bode clearly heard it now, too: the change in the timbre of her voice, the cadence. And shit, not shite, though the Elizabeth he knew would never say either. At least, he didn’t think so. But just which Elizabeth did he know?
“No.” The word sounded broken. It might have been the strange shimmy in the air, but it seemed to him that Meme’s face was fracturing, too. Behind their purple lenses, her lids fluttered, and then he saw the glister of tears dashing down her cheeks. “How can this be?” Meme said, a hand to her mouth as if she might be ill. “How can you be first a shadow-boy and then—”
“Boy?” Elizabeth snapped to attention. “What did he look like? What color was his hair? What …” But then Elizabeth stopped, and Bode thought it was because she’d finally gotten a good look at Meme. “Oh my God. That … you … that’s not possible.”
“What?” Meme shook both her fists. “You dare say I am impossible? It is you who cannot be. This is not right, it cannot be right! He said that I was the only …”
The glasses. The realization broke over Bode like a dash of icy water. When I looked through, I saw the other Tony. Now Meme looks at Elizabeth—and she must see someone else: first some kind of shadowy figure—a boy—then Elizabeth, and now …
“Who are you? What is your name?” Meme shook her fists. If she’d a knife, Bode thought she might have used it. “Where do you come from? Why are you here?”
He saw the moment the other girl weighed all her choices; saw them flash through her fine features. He saw the instant she decided, too.
“I have an idea of why I’m here,” she said to Meme, and Bode heard just how tightly she reined in that quaver, as if she were a hair’s breadth from losing control. Her voice was still harsh, though he thought from the way she grimaced that was because talking must hurt. Weber had nearly crushed her windpipe. “I came to find my friends. I was … between, in the Dark Passages.”
“I know that.” Meme spat the word. “I saw that boy, that shadow.”
“I don’t know about that,” the girl with Elizabeth’s face said.
“But he knows you,” Bode said.
“Do not tell her!” Meme snapped.
“Why? Where’s the harm?”
“What?” The girl looked from Meme to Bode. “Tell me what?”
How calmly I’m taking all this, like a girl tells me she’s a boy every day. “The boy. He said to tell you that his name’s Eric. That Casey and R-Rima,” he stumbled, “and Lizzie? They’re all there, but they’re stains. He said you would understand what he meant.”
“What?” The girl’s jaw dropped. “He’s here? Eric is …” She put a hand to her chest. “Inside?” she whispered. “He’s inside me?”
“So it would appear,” Meme said. “He must be strongest of the lot, but he is not what you think anymore. He is part of it, more of the Dark Passages than any Now you knew. They are in you, bound to your blood.”
“Where did you come from?” Bode asked. “Do you live in the Dark Passages?”
“No.” The girl swallowed. “I’m from Wisconsin.”
“Wisconsin.” Same as little Emma. “Where is that? North of London?”
“Well, it’s north.” The girl looked taken aback. “Um … in the United States?”
“The United what?” Bode frowned. “What you yammering about?”
“It must exist in her Now,” Meme said.
“Wait, you mean there’s no United States here? No America?” The girl blinked. “What … what about Germany? Europe? Russia?”
The names were so much gibberish. “There’s only England,” Bode said. “There’s only ever been England, and now just this part of London, thanks to the Peculiar. Why? Is it different in your … your Now?”
“Way,” she said. “Way different.” Then she se
emed to hear what he’d just said. “Peculiar? What Peculiar? Are you telling me we’re inside one?”
“Only in a manner of speaking. It’s the fog what’s eating up the world.”
“Stop encouraging it to believe its own fictions,” Meme said. “She is not even a real person, only a fragment wearing another girl’s body.”
“Not where I come from,” the girl said.
“You are nothing.” Meme pounded her chest with a clenched fist. “I don’t care what you think you see in the mirror. I am a person, not you!”
The girl cast a look down at her body as if she’d just now tried on a skirt and blouse several sizes too small. “Well, considering where I am, I see why you’d think that. But if you know about the Dark Passages and other Nows, then you must know that there are multiple versions of everyone: as people, ideas … whatever.”
“I don’t know nothing about that, but I seen myself in a nightmare, and doubles of my friends, too,” Bode said.
“What?” Meme said, at the same instant that the other girl said, “Nightmare?”
“Yeah, of a valley,” Bode said. “A lot of snow. And my friends, Tony and Rima, they saw themselves, too.”
The other girl gasped. “You know Tony? He’s alive? He’s here? What about Rima? Is she okay?”
“Here? Yeah, my Rima is fine, but she’s not the girl from that valley, that dream.” Bode’s throat tried to close. “The bloody thing’s real, isn’t it? The valley, the fight, that monster, those … scorpions. All of it. I die to save you and the others,” Bode said to the girl in Elizabeth’s body. “Don’t I? Didn’t I?” He bunched his fists over his heart. “I felt it happen. But if I saved you, why are you here? If I already did this once, what am I to do now? Why am I here? Why are you?”
“She is here because she has been drawn to Elizabeth and what she carries. She is nothing but a piece, a fragment, and so are these others of whom she speaks.” To the other girl, Meme said, “You have nothing to say to him. He belongs here, and so do his friends. They are not like you. Your Rima has vanished. Her world is in ruins, and your Tony is dying, and good riddance; he should, he should.” Meme sounded on the verge of tears. “I should never have interfered. Doctor is right. We are better off rid of you all.”
“Meme.” He was suddenly very tired, his head crammed with information. Just a few minutes’ peace and quiet to sort all this out. “Hold on. Can’t lose our heads. We have to think about what to do next.”
“I know precisely what I must do.” She glared at the other girl. “What is your name? I need to know.”
“It’s not what you think,” the other girl said.
“What does she think?” Bode asked.
“Not this.” The other girl didn’t take her eyes from Meme. “I know what you want to hear, but … my name’s Emma.”
What? Bode goggled. Two Emmas? One grown, the other not? Which one do I help? Which is the right one?
“No.” All the color drained from Meme’s face. “No … no.”
“Meme?” When she looked at Emma through those glasses, what had Meme seen? Was Emma some monster, or a bloody ruin like poor Tony? That entity, Eric, had said stain, shadow. “What did you see?” Bode asked. “Who?”
“Bode,” Emma said, from her corner, “you can’t let her leave.”
But it was too late. Meme shrieked something guttural and inarticulate, a high, animal keening that filled this space until it seemed to Bode the world was made of nothing else but that sound.
And then Bode felt the floor, the walls, the cave … begin to shake.
RIMA
Lost
WHY YOU COMING so low, and why now? Hunching her shoulders against the wind, Rima gave the sky a sidelong glance as she and Emma horsed the cart another half foot while Tony strained at the yoke. No, it wasn’t her imagination. The snow was still falling in sheets, almost in a deluge like a heavy rain. Yet through this strange half-light, she saw that the fog was much closer. So either they were wandering into a thick roll of errant mist, or the Peculiar itself was drawing down over them. Or—she aimed another uneasy look—you’re about to spit out another visitor.
“No use,” Tony said, teeth chattering. Weighed down with bodies, their cart had sunk until the axles were completely submerged. “Don’t look anyone’s been out this far in years.”
One look, and Rima felt a sick stab of dismay. “Tony.” She touched a hand to her nose. “You n-need to …”
“What? Sh-shite.” Swiping at his lip, he studied the scarlet chunks of frozen blood, then brushed his hand against a thigh. “N-no help for it,” he said brusquely.
“So wh-what do we do n-now?” Snow lathered Emma’s eyebrows. Her shoulders were mantled with white. On the cart, a sack rippled as Jack wormed his way to the neck and popped out for a look. “Hey, b-boy.” Emma rested her forehead on the cat’s head. “Don’t you know curiosity k-killed the cat? You need to stay warm.” To the others: “Do we g-go back?”
“No.” When Tony opened his mouth to protest, Rima pushed on, “You heard Bode. You can’t risk getting closer to the other T-Tony.”
“Don’t think it makes much difference.” Shrugging out of his yoke, Tony stumped around to the cart’s rear and held out his arms. “Come on, girls, get warm.”
Sinking into his chest made the icy lump of fear in Rima’s throat melt a bit. Burying her face in his coat, she inhaled his scent. Despite her new mittens, the pain in her hands was ferocious, like hundreds of knives hacking her flesh. “Why haven’t we made it off-grounds y-y-yet?” Talking was hard work. “How far back do you think the asylum is?”
“Don’t know.” His right arm tightened around her shoulders. “Last thing I remember seeing was those ruins. I thought I kept them to our l-l-left, but …”
But you’re not sure. Neither was she. She felt her stomach drop. They’d gotten themselves lost somehow. Gloomy, and the snow’s so thick, easy to get turned around. Then, of course, there was the Peculiar.
“Was it like that when I showed up?” Emma’s eyes slid from the glowering fog to Rima. “That th-thick?”
She nodded. “But lower, too. Like a curtain or sheet of paper.”
“Think there’s someone else coming? Maybe”—the little girl swallowed—“that crazy lady? She might know we’re here b-by now.”
“Regardless”—Tony snugged them close—“we won’t let her take you.”
“May not be up to you.” Emma was paler than the snow. “Can I ask you a question, Rima? About drawing?”
“What do you want to know?” Rima asked.
“Does it work both ways? Can you put back?”
“Why you asking?” Tony jogged the girl’s shoulder. “What you thinking?”
“What about what you take?” The girl skimmed her tongue over lips that were dead-white. “Is it always … you know … when someone’s s-sick?”
“Emma?” Rima ducked down to catch the girl’s eyes. “What are you …”
“You take energy. So … that means eventually things even out, maybe even tip the other way, and you can’t h-hold on to all of it. You don’t know that you can’t draw other things, too. Like that other R-Rima?”
“She took what was left after death,” Tony said.
“A whisper,” Rima said. “A watermark.”
“Isn’t that just another name for residual energy?” Emma asked.
“What are you driving at?” Tony asked.
“I’m not sure, but …” Emma’s mouth worked. “Tell me this: when you take s-sickness, can you let it go where you want?”
“I don’t know.” Despite the cold, she was mystified, a little interested now, too. “Why are you …”
“Could you hide me?” The girl blurted it out, the words under pressure. “Take who I am, my … my watermark or stain or whisper or whatever, and b-bottle me up or something? Could you hide me inside of you and then let me go? Put me b-back?”
“What are you saying?” Snow tumbled from Tony’s eye
brows as they folded in an alarmed frown. “You mean, you want Rima to steal your … your soul?”
“If it’s energy.” Eyes pooling, the girl nodded. “Yeah. Could you?”
“I don’t …” Rima faltered, looked to Tony for help. “Emma, why would you even think …”
“Because what if she does come?” Tears swelled over the girl’s cheeks. “If I’m … you know … dead, then maybe she’ll leave me alone!”
“No.” Aghast, Tony crushed the weeping girl close. “Never. We have you, Emma. You’re our charge, yeah? Our chuckaboo? ’sides, you heard Meme. They never once mentioned you. Don’t even know about you.”
“They have to, if they’re working together. Only a matter of time before they figure it out.” Ice-tears pebbled the girl’s jaw. “And I don’t trust Meme. Bode d-does, but you know he shouldn’t.”
Blast, why does she have to be so observant? Doesn’t miss a trick. Rimes of hoar frost clung to Rima’s muffler where her breath had first condensed and then iced. Now that she’d stopped moving, her many layers of clothing, saturated with sweat, were already beginning to freeze. “What are you talking about?” she asked, knowing full well what the girl was saying. “Why would you say that?”
“Come on, Rima, I’m not dumb,” Emma said. “I saw your face. When you l-looked through the panops?”
“She’s right.” Small bits of ice rained from Tony’s lashes and eyebrows when he scrubbed his face. “I did, too. The name’s wrong, but you know it was her. I r-recognized her from the dream.” He paused. “And we let Bode go, no warning.”
He’d have done it anyway. What was more, Rima suspected Bode must know, even if the name was wrong. Why would that be, though? Ours were all the same: two Rimas, two Tonys, two Bodes. “Once he’s got his head in harness …”
“He don’t back down. I know. But Emma’s right. Wh-why did you keep cutting me off, not let me tell him?”
Because so many other things are right. She didn’t understand this Many Worlds business or Nows, but there were the glasses, and she believed in doubles leading their own lives. There was the nightmare they all shared, after all. “Since you’re both so observant, did either of you see the way she looked at him? She likes Bode. Cares for him. Her coming out wasn’t never for us or the other T-Tony.” And what of the other me? She said that Rima’s world is a shambles. But why? Because that Rima’s not there? “She did it for Bode, pure and simple.”