Eleanor (54 page)

“Not always a welcome one,” Eleanor says.
 

Your father?
the darkness asks.

“My father was transformed by my arrival,” Eleanor says. To Mea she says, “He thought I was
you
.”

Mea trembles unexpectedly.
Me?

His grief was eased
, the darkness says.
And your mother?

Mea tightens her grip on Eleanor, nervously.

Eleanor says, “My mother murdered me.”

Her wounds fester
, the darkness says.
She is not healed. I fear you have failed.

What can she do now?
Mea asks.
What can be done?

The darkness is resolute.
It is over. Time will not permit further intervention. Her pain would return to the past with her. It would destroy all of you.

“No,” Eleanor says, firmly.
 

The darkness is taken aback.
It is not for you to debate.

“I have to go back. I’m going back to see her.”

Impossible,
the darkness repeats.
Forbidden. Even if it were not, you could not return. Dream worlds do not permit the passage of the dead. You are in your final resting place. The rift will be your home.

No
, Mea protests.
No, you have to—

There is no alternative,
the darkness says.
Remember, child, that you have given up your human form. Do not weep for an existence that you cannot return to.

“She can return,” Eleanor says. “She can go with me.”

Impossible
, the darkness says.
Perhaps you do not understand.

“No. It’s not impossible,” Eleanor says.

It has never been done. It cannot be done.

“It may never have been done before,” Eleanor says, “but that doesn’t mean it can
never
be done. I know the way back in. The path lies in the beasts of the field. I saw their eyes, darkness. I saw myself, and I saw my sister. The beasts are not beasts at all. They are us. We may be dead, but in my mother’s nightmare, we
live
.”

The darkness swells in size, dwarfing Eleanor and Mea.
 

You have given up your impermanent form,
it thunders.
It is time for you to relinquish your human name, and take your death name.
 

Mea shivers, but Eleanor holds firm.

“If I fail again, you can have my name,” she says. “But we’re going back, and Mea—Esmerelda—is coming with us.”

Us? We?
The darkness pauses.
You are not alone. Someone is there with you.

Mea is perplexed.
What are you talking about? What someone?

Eleanor says, “You are not the only soul in the rift, Mea. The darkness is not the only wise ancient.”

Give up your name
, the darkness insists, and with a flurry of motion and sparks, it grows enormous in the rift, looming large and angry over Mea and Eleanor.
You must give it to me.
 

A new voice answers.
How petulant you are
, it says.
Who taught you such manners?

Who—
Mea asks.
 

I do not see you!
the darkness shouts, ripping red against the void.
Present yourself. Be known!

A grand ocean, blue and alive, surges into the rift like a wall, angry and torrid. The darkness cries out in fear. The strange new ocean lifts them all high in the steep black emptiness, and the darkness itself is rendered small by the ocean’s great power.

Your name!
the darkness bellows in desperation.
I will know your name!

The ocean’s response is a roar, a cacophony of light and color.
 

I AM ELEANOR,
the ocean commands.
AND I WILL SEE MY FAMILY RESTORED.

The forests crawl over the mountains like a swarm of bees on a hive, and the keeper delights in her power. The trees claw up from the earth, stretching toward the summer sky, birthing birds in their branches, shaking themselves at the sun.
 

“Yes,” the keeper says. Her shadow flits happily about her feet.
 

The restoration of her valley has been a long affair, and now she hardly remembers the fire that chewed through the woods, the black ash that fell from the sky, fastening itself to her skin like leeches. The mountains have been reassembled, pebble by pebble, and they stand glorious against the cloudless sky, smooth fresh teeth in strong, earthy gums.
 

She filled the gaping hole in the center of the valley with new rock that she formed in her palms, for the old rock had been melted away. As she worked, the glowing fissures in the rock cooled, and the acrid scent of death dissipated over a period of months. She is proud that she filled the hole at all. It seemed to have no bottom, but now the earth has pressed together to grow solid again, to present a new foundation for the sky to rest upon.
 

The wound erased from her home, she climbs to the top of the highest mountain and stands on its flat roof. There she finds a still, shining puddle of bright water. She kneels beside it, and spies tiny minnows darting about within.
 

“Hello,” she says. “Hello, there.”

Her shadow passes over the water, and for the first time in what must be decades, she sees her reflection stare up at her from the still surface of the puddle. Her mouth opens, and she stares. Her cheeks are pink and smooth and alive, her hair long and rust-colored. Her eyes fairly sparkle. She smiles, and her teeth are clean and orderly and white. She sticks her tongue out. It is smooth and moist. There is no trace of the black sludge.
 

She stands up and lifts the hem of the dress she created, pulling it over her head. When she is naked, she touches her small breasts, smooths her palms over her middle, and rests them on her belly. It is flat and pale.
 

The spreading black stain is gone.

“I am well,” she says aloud. She looks down at her shadow and says, “Let’s celebrate.”

Her shadow stretches long and thin, fleeing the brightness of the sun, and the keeper turns and looks down on her valley. She sits down on the edge of the flat cliff, and points her slim finger at the far horizon, and begins to draw the creek which once ran through the meadow.

NOW
, the ocean commands.
SHE CARVES THE PATH.

Eleanor gathers Mea to herself. “Hold on,” she says, and Mea becomes a vise around her.
 

The darkness retreats, revealing the great membrane that borders all worlds, and the ocean explodes forward in a torrent, sucking the girls along with it, and surges through the portal.

The darkness remains behind, and watches.

The keeper is on the mountainside, just above the treeline, when it happens. She pauses to appreciate the glittering creek, then frowns when it stops glittering. High above the valley, the blackest clouds she has ever seen have appeared.
 

“Where have you come from?” the keeper growls. “You are not welcome here!”

She lifts her hands to the sky and waves the clouds aside.

But they do not clear.
 

It begins to rain instead, and a knot of dread forms in her throat.
 

“No,” she says, steeling herself against the downpour. “No, this will not happen. No, this valley is mine!”

But the sun does not rise when she commands it.
 

She looks at her hands, then back up at the valley. A ferocious gust of wind screams through the distant mountains, and the new trees tilt and snap. She can hear their trunks splitting even from here, miles and miles away.
 

“NO!” the keeper howls.
 

And then an ocean sweeps large and gray and angry over the farthest, tallest peaks of her mountains, and the keeper falls to her knees.

Her shadow loops around her feet and begins to climb the mountain again, dragging the keeper behind it, until both keeper and shadow rest atop the flat mountain shelf, staring in horror at the sea that swallows her masterpiece. The water rises steadily, frothy and dark, and finally abates only a few feet below the peak of the keeper’s mountain.

She wakes.

For days she has remained helplessly cornered atop the mountain. For days she has summoned all her strength to push the water away. For days she has failed. The sun ignores her call. Inhospitable clouds meet the sea, dousing the keeper in fog. She cries, she roars, she collapses. Her valley does not hear her cries. She can feel the mountain rumble beneath her feet, its integrity threatened by the hundreds of millions of tons of water pressing down on it.
 

Soon, she thinks, it will crumble, and she will sink beneath this alien ocean, and she will drown, and that will be the end of everything.
 

“Hopeless,” she moans. Her shadow does not respond, and when she looks down she does not see it at all.
 

Finally, she has been abandoned.
 

The keeper huddles naked in the rain, and waits for the end.