River: A Novel (47 page)

 My own eyes
were surrounded by the dimming vortex, and I wasn’t sure if they closed when
the world faded, turning to black.

Some days it
was just harder to wake up, and this was one of those days. All I wanted was to
go back to sleep. Failing to doze off again, I decided to give up. I was having
a tough time remembering what day it was, along with where I was, come to try
to think of it, and groaned internally while admitting to the frequency that this
was becoming my new normal. I really needed to get myself together.

 Distracting
my inner critic, I attempted to open my eyes. While feeling for my eyelids to move
up and down, opening and closing them again and again, I began to worry. All I
could see was darkness. Another jolt of fear slithered through me as I realized,
though not standing, I wasn’t exactly lying down. There was nothing but a black
vacuum sucking at me. My mind went into panic mode. The flashes of a long
forgotten dream, my memories, came back in snippets: beginning in New York,
waking up in River, the muted people. Then they became more solid. Danny,
Petra, Nanette. Asher, Gwen, and Colin. My possible parents. The fateful performance.
Mace and the Dark Room. The ice. Death.

 But,
maybe… 

 Maybe I
wasn’t dead. I couldn’t remember dying
specifically
. Although I was
pretty sure that had been what happened.
Asher
. My last memory was
watching him drown as my own lungs had filled with lake water. I took a breath.
Nothing. Then again, I
was
panicking. Commanding my lungs to take
another breath, I was still unable to feel anything. But would death be this solidly
black? My mind froze as the memory of the Dark Room flitted through my
thoughts. Mace could have pulled me out of the water and revived me. He could
have placed me in a Dark Room as one of his trophies and given me something to
cause complete numbness—perhaps entailing some sort of sensory deprivation
device. I opened my mouth to speak, or scream, but nothing happened. No air… no
voice.

 An echoing
sound spiraled through the blindness surrounding me, and I remembered diving
into the water, knowing what would happen.
Suicides don’t go anywhere
, I
thought with chagrin. Maybe this was it. An eternity of nothing other than a
glob of words and memories trapped within my own abstract head. I figuratively
sighed.
Way to go, Elodie.
Well, I had the opportunity to mentally kick
myself until the end of time, apparently. My thoughts froze as the echo finally
reached me. It was laughter.

 
Mace
.

 But the
timbre sounded off. It was softer, less maniacal, albeit still creepy. I’d also
heard it before… somewhere.

 Abruptly dropping
the loose thread of evasive memory, I noticed a pinpoint of light had broken
through the shade like a distant firefly, giving me something to see. It seemed
to be growing, or I was moving toward it, though still without any senses. Brighter
and closer it glowed, soon illuminating an outline, a dusky silhouette.
My
body
, I thought, internally jumping with elation. As the light grew, I
forgot my fear… and why I had been afraid to begin with. I couldn’t place how I
had come to this strange existence. My name was eluding me….

 There was
only light. Now so bright that it should have hurt my eyes, but I felt nothing
except want for the light.

 I knew
this.

 This was
everything.

 A low sound
scattered the silence of the void and focused my fleeting thoughts. A single
note morphed into a slow, liquid fugue. My body followed the humming as it built
within itself; growing and filling space with music so lush that I began to
feel
it. I remembered nothing but this sensation, this music, and a white field. A
shaft of light, the pulling aside of a curtained window broke through the
reverie of my mind. It began as the slit of a waxing crescent silently
shattering the loneliness of midnight. A different color than the spotlight flashed
like the sun in a glance. There was crystal clear blue, mysterious yet familiar
in its shape, staying with me.

 A gale
force wind blew through my body, and although the clothing I wore didn’t move
at all, I could suddenly feel its weight. Maybe I had been a marionette of the
universe, but now I was the one controlling the strings. My arms and legs
stretched in adagio until I felt a surge of electricity flow through my veins. The
current followed the music, bending my legs when I leaped into the prism of
light. Muscles flexed and released with the exact speed each note required. My
feet landing on a stage, I flicked out of a plié into sissonne, tracing through
rond de jamb to fourth position. Pirouettes followed, forcing the music to
change. The velocity made me giddy as I then turned in a circle of leaps, my
arms jetting out as my mouth turned up in elation. My body and mind worked in
tandem, creating the sounds that made me dance with such joy and happiness that
I would surely never stop. 

 That blue
light continued to follow me, much more subtle than the spotlight, but it was
there. Unable to ignore it after a time, I slowed the tempo down to the beginning
of the fugue, melting the movement with the brushing of my feet, gliding to the
front center of the stage. I stopped, tilting my head in curiosity. What else
was there besides the music and the dance? After a moment of wondering, I had
to find out. Sitting on the edge of the stage, I prepared to jump down into the
dark.

 I stopped
and sat straight up as the blue light grew closer. Reflected off the shining
stage light, now at a stand-still, a shape appeared… memorable somehow. Tall. I
didn’t think I knew of anything except what happened when my body collided with
light and music, but I was wrong. The color was different, of course. Although
sapphire blue was not consistent with what my mind could distantly recall, I
was acquainted with it nonetheless. My eyes moved to a mouth that had a small
smile carved into it. An inch away, I sat bolt upright when hands covered my
own as they gripped the smooth wooden ledge of the stage. I remembered
something then: warmth.

 He spoke, and
the music stopped.

 “Elodie.” His
eyes held me still. I felt my face go blank. 

 While remaining
frozen when he leaned toward me, that curiosity of something other than the
dance made my head incline to the side. At the same time his whispering lips
brushed my ear. “Do you remember?” The words made me shiver as our cheeks touched;
the feeling of warmth spreading until I became heavy with it. 

 Immeasurable
moments passed as molecules circling the air seeped into my skin, laden with
memories. As my previous illusion of life came back to me along with my name,
so did his.

 “James Asher,”
I breathed out. My neglected throat tickled, and I stifled a cough. His hands
left mine, circling my waist, his shoulders relaxing in relief. I wrapped my
arms around his neck, marveling briefly on the absurdity of forgetting his
name. His grip tightened, and he lifted me off the stage, holding me up while I
closed my eyes. Asher’s throaty laugh was contagious, and I laughed as well,
burying my face in his neck. 

 Our
laughter slowly dissolving, the strange swaying of the room ended, but he continued
to hold me. Finally, I had to look at him. When I pulled away reluctantly, he
set my feet down. We grinned shyly at one another.

 “Do you
know your eyes are blue?” I asked, smiling, wondering where the delicate gray
that was his normal color had gone.

 “Hmm, no.” 
He shrugged. “My father’s eyes were blue. Huh.” He didn’t seem too concerned
that one of his defining features had completely changed. I noted with relief
that his body seemed healed. 

 “Do I look
the same?” I asked, trying not to laugh at the impossibility of what was
happening.

 Asher’s
hand trailed to my temple. “You are even more beautiful than before. Most of all,
you’re not in danger.” His smile finally faltered a bit, obviously remembering.

 Just then a
crystalline voice hummed through the silence, breaking our hold on each other
and clueing us in that we were no longer alone. Asher suddenly grinned with
such fever; I couldn’t help but think he’d lost it a little. We turned to the
spotlight just as Gwen walked through it, closing the distance slowly toward
the foreground of the stage. She looked healed as well, though sadness framed
her eyes as she sang absently. It was the same song from the first night I’d
met her—a settled longing of what would never be.

 I reached
up to where she stood when her song ended. It was an anxious reunion on my part.
She had been beaten terribly, and I wanted to make sure she was truly all right.
Asher took her other hand before we helped her from the stage. 

 “Gwen,” I
whispered, giving her a hug. Her lip trembled when she couldn’t smile. “It will
be okay.” Speaking into her silky hair, I began patting her back gently. Asher
still held her hand.

 “We will
find him, Gwen,” he said, quietly but with conviction.

 I felt her
head nod against my shoulder while she took in a shaky breath. Pulling away
from us slightly, she brushed tears from her beautiful brown eyes. Sadness
overwhelmed me as I thought of her son, of Danny and Petra, and the town of
River. Abruptly, my entire being was engulfed in horrible guilt. Everyone in
River flashed through my mind. And I could’ve stayed.  Instead, I chose to
leave under impossible circumstances: either losing myself to Mace’s horrid
devices or dying with Asher. Remorse weighed down on me again. I considered how
I could have possibly escaped and saved my life, along with finding Colin, wherever
Mace had taken him.                                                              

 Gwen’s eyes
suddenly reeled when a cold breeze swept over us. I shivered as the winter wind
hit my mostly bare skin, waking me from a heavy conscience.

 “Where do
you think we are?” Asher asked.

 Exchanging
glances, I decided to keep my thoughts to myself. In the moments on the stage, I
hadn’t thought of myself as a dancing ghost, a specter of my own demise. But
after recalling River, I didn’t want to alarm them that we were probably all ghosts,
stuck in some kind of looping afterlife where people were different, yet the
same, and governed by psychotic dictators. Fortunately, I’d been there before and
had some experience this time around. Unfortunately for them, they’d been
dragged along with me. This was what I supposed had happened, but things did
feel differently than when I had woken up in River. Besides, I was only going
on presumptions. 

 As I vacillated
on telling them my theory, we watched a door open behind the theater seats. Slowly
it widened as more cold air drifted toward us—along with smells I’d forgotten. Car
exhaust mixed with a hint of garlicky food, all sharpened by mid-winter. Sounds
followed much to my relief: loud traffic, music, voices. Shouts, actually. Beaming
at Asher and Gwen, I felt my lip quirk in shock. 

 “I think I
know where we are.” Laughing, I shook my head in disbelief. Headed toward the
door, I quickly examined myself, shivering again. I was wearing toe shoes with
a short, sleeveless satin dress over tights.
Wonderful
. Thankfully,
while I searched around the empty theater for a blanket or a new wardrobe,
Asher covered my arms with the jacket he’d been wearing. I smiled in gratitude.
At least I hadn’t been wearing a tutu… not that anyone outside this particular
door would’ve noticed.  

 Reaching an
arm out to circle his waist, I couldn’t help but grin wider at his confused
expression. We towed Gwen along, and when she met my eyes, utterly lost, I gave
her a look of encouragement. Without fear, I guided my friends into the streets
of New York City.

“Elodie… what’s
happening?” Asher was speaking, but his voice was having a hard time reaching
my brain. It could have been shock making everything seem like an echo to me; a
boomerang of words and images that made no sense. I tried to piece everything
together before replying because I didn’t have any sort of answer. Looking back
on the past days and hours, however, nothing should have been this astonishing
to me.

 The three
of us had walked out of the little nondescript theater earlier in the day. I
had been pretty joyous to be on a city street; not one I knew but still familiar.
It was a typical New York scene: crowds everywhere, cars and trucks streaming
by, noise, flashing lights, and more noise. Asher and Gwen had competed for
having the biggest eyes while taking it all in—the towering buildings blocking
out the white winter sun, people of every type moving as sinuously swift as
bats, oblivious to each other, to us.

..................

They stood frozen
and staring, and I couldn’t stop my grin when nudging them. “C’mon guys.  We
look like tourists.” Asher snapped out of it quickly, but we had to lead Gwen
away and closer to the intersection so that I could read the street sign. Everything
seemed as normal as I could’ve hoped for, up to this point anyway—my dismal
eyesight included. After reading the numbers, I deduced we were about fourteen blocks
from Danny’s apartment. It was the only place I could think of to regroup, but
it was far. The Fates had deposited us in the middle of the city without my
debit card, so the transit system was out, along with cabs.