Eleanor (42 page)

“Sort of,” Eleanor says.
 

I am not dead,
Mea says.
Death is a thing which visits bodies, not the beings which inhabit them. You will understand this when your body dies, but for now you may think of me as a spirit, or a soul, or a consciousness.
It is not urgent that you understand all of this. It is enough that you have been told.

Eleanor says, “But why are
you
here?”

Mea seems to laugh. A pink rush of color explodes outward, and Eleanor almost laughs herself.
 

It is not an original story,
Mea says.
Your storytellers have long had this correct. I must remain in the rift until a wrong is put right again.

“You’re a ghost,” Eleanor says. “You’re a ghost that has to put its affairs in order before you can rest.”

Perhaps your oldest storytellers were like you, Eleanor
, Mea says.
Travelers between your world and the rift. Perhaps that is how they have always known.

“What wrong do you have to correct?” Eleanor asks.

I must put right the same wrong which you wish to settle
, Mea says.

Eleanor is confused. “What?”

My family
, Mea says.
I wish to bring them peace.

“My family is fine,” Eleanor says.
 

That is naive
, Mea says.
But that is not your fault.
 

Eleanor is quiet.
 

You believe that your family—that you yourself—can move only forward in time. Therefore their affairs can only be addressed in a reactive way. But in this you are incorrect.
 

“I don’t understand,” Eleanor says.
 

You are in the rift now, Eleanor
, Mea answers.
You have absented yourself from the stream of time. Like me, you exist outside of time. Time is the river below your feet. Think of yourself as a bird. You may fly upriver, and you may fly downriver. You may also fly higher, or lower, or in any other direction you—

“You can alter the past,” Eleanor says, suddenly.

Yes.

“My family—”

Yes.

“They—
we
—haven’t been fine for a long time.”

I am aware.

“But how?”

Eleanor
, Mea says.
I must ask you a question now.

Eleanor says, “Okay.”

If you could heal your family, would you?

“Of course,” Eleanor answers immediately.
 

What if there were conditions?

“I wouldn’t care.”

If, for instance, healing your family meant that you had to relive a part of your life—would you do it?

Eleanor thinks of the terrible morning all those years ago, of her mother bleeding behind the wheel, of her sister draped in a sheet.
 

“I would do anything,” she says softly.
 

That is what I hoped to hear
, Mea says.
Our purposes are aligned. We may begin.

“How do you know about my family?” Eleanor asks, her colors urgent and bright in the darkness.
 

Ask the proper question
, Mea says.
 

Eleanor struggles with this. “I don’t
know
the right question,” she says, almost shouting.

Slow, Eleanor,
Mea says.
Agitation will expel you from the rift, as before. Be calm. Think.

Eleanor counts, slowly, to fifty. In that space of time, it seems as if a billion years have flickered by. But she rests in the darkness, feels her body grow still.
 

“I don’t know the question,” she says, finally. “Tell me what to ask.”

You asked my name
, Mea says.

“Yes,” Eleanor says.

And then the correct question comes to her, and she is afraid to ask.

Do not be frightened. It is only a question. It changes nothing that is not already true.

Eleanor feels the darkness inside her, the same dark that is within Mea, and it stills her fears.
 

Before she asks the question she knows the answer, and she wants to weep.

Ask
.

Eleanor does. “Who are—who
were
you?”

And Mea answers.

The keeper stands upon the crest of the hill, staring out into her valley. It only resembles a valley now to her, and only barely. Its familiar wide bowl shape is gone, one entire slope of it crushed like fireplace embers. The earthquakes since the mountain was destroyed have been fierce, shaking the peak beside the rubble into pebbles itself. For the first time the keeper can see beyond the mountains that have embraced her for so many years.

Beyond the mountains is nothing at all.
 

The clouds seem to tumble to the earth, where they swirl into a dense fog so thick it appears solid. She cannot see trees or other mountains through the fog. She thinks that it might spill through the gap-toothed wound in the mountain ridge, but it doesn’t. It frightens her. The fog is unnatural.

She stands there for a time, watching the sluggish river of melted rock cascading through the trees and into the valley itself. It is cooling now, solidifying slowly, steaming like a campfire doused with water.

Her shadow curls around her feet, having returned to her now.
 

“It’s all gone,” the keeper croaks.
 

Her shadow is silent, as it always is.

The hill beneath her feet rumbles, and she drops to her knees, afraid that the quakes and their aftershocks will throw her to the ground and break her bones. She feels more fragile now than ever, and the terrible black poison in her belly has begun to spread farther, its awful stain deepening between her breasts, wrapping around her hips.
 

The rumble is not another earthquake, nor an aftershock.

She senses her shadow tugging at her ankles. It stretches away behind her, like a puppy straining at a leash, and the keeper turns.

In the cupped palm of earth between the hills, the beasts are moving. No—one of them is moving. The largest beast takes a thunderous step away from the keeper, then another. In the black ink of the beast’s long shadow, its smaller companion struggles on its knees, unable to stand.
 

“What are you doing?” the keeper rasps.
 

The large beast pauses, turns. The keeper watches, astonished, as the beast entwines its long neck with the smaller beast’s crooked one. Their necks wind together like strands of rope. The largest lows softly, and then its neck tightens, and it leans backward. The tension draws the small beast to its feet. It sways uncertainly, and for a moment the keeper is afraid it will pitch over and die before her.
 

But it finds its balance, uneasy though it may be, and with halting steps begins to follow the large beast over the hill.
 

“Wait,” the keeper whispers.
 

She stands up and tries to run, but her knees are too weak, and she falls. The earth is brittle and black underneath her. It leaves charcoal smudges on her skin as she struggles upright again.
 

“Wait,” she says again, but the beasts have found their gait.

They are heading for the hole in the mountains.

The beasts are leaving the valley.

Eleanor can hear him hit the water.
 

Mea has learned much since Eleanor’s previous visit to the rift. She has put Eleanor back into the world at the precise moment of her departure, but has deposited her gently on the island shore. Eleanor is naked, and she goes to the rowboat and finds Jack’s windbreaker. It is just long enough to cover her. She frowns at her bare legs, at the visible, fine hairs there.
 

“Jack!” Eleanor shouts.
 

She doesn’t think he can hear her over the waves, which heave in large shelves, higher than before. She worries for him. The water is frigid, and moves in such broad swells that she wonders if he will be able to swim around the hook of the island, back to the boat.
 

But he does.
 

He doesn’t see her. She can see even from this distance that he is shaking.
 

Idiot
, she thinks to herself.
You should have gone up and gotten your clothes.
 

But it wouldn’t have done Jack any good. Their clothes were already soaking wet when they took them off.
 

The sky turns dark, and Jack comes ashore like a ghost, pale and chattering. He staggers and almost falls onto the pebbled shore, and Eleanor could strangle herself for the danger she’s put him in. What would have happened to him if she hadn’t returned to this same
when?
She pushes the image of a hypothermic, shuddering Jack out of her mind, and runs to him.

His eyes widen at the sight of her.
 

“Don’t try to talk,” she says.
 

He quivers like an arrow. She takes his windbreaker off, not caring anymore that she is naked, and wraps it around Jack’s shoulders. She rubs him down vigorously. He shakes so hard that he can barely stand. His eyes flutter shut, then snap open.
 

“Into the boat,” she says.
 

She helps him in, and he sinks to the bottom and curls into a ball. Eleanor leans against the boat with all her might, and shoves it into the sea, then leaps inside.
 

“I’ll get you home,” she says to Jack.

Darkness falls over Jack like a sheet. She can almost see it happen.
 

She takes up the oars, and hopes she can row them back.

She slaps him awake on the shore. He doesn’t respond, so she slaps him again, and he twitches, a little. She hits him harder, with the flat of her hand, and he starts awake. His eyes are shot through with red twine, and his lips are the color of frozen plums.
 

“I’m sorry,” she says. “It was the only way to wake you up.”

He blinks, and tries to look around.
 

“D-don’t g-go,” he stammers. His voice is small and reedy.