Chapter #13Darkness and Moonlight by: Nostrum   "How?"
The answer flies from your mouth: "I told you already, I’ll make him pay! I'll turn him to stone like he did to my father! And I'll smash him so there's no hope—! No hope—"
"No hope of what?"
"No hope of coming back!"
"No hope of who coming back? Him? Or yourself?"
The question staggers you. "Him of course!"
"Could you come back from that, after you smashed him?"
"Come back from what?" you demand. "From paying him back what he deserved?"
"Yes. Could you come back, from turning him into stone?"
"From where? Yes!"
"Could he come back? From turning someone into stone?"
Again, you are wrong-footed. "I—! Are you saying—? We're not the same, me and the professor!"
The room is still dark, but a gray light has begun to pervade it. It's like a time you went camping, and dense fog rolled over the landscape at midnight. There is no light inside the mist, and yet there must be light from somewhere, for as you stagger to your feet a shadow some distance off also stumbles upright.
All this time you have been dimly aware that this place is—must be—Margaret's study. Unless she has transported you somewhere. For of course nothing about her cottage or the people who live there surprises you anymore.
You stumble toward the shadow, expecting to meet it, but it retreats from you.
"We're not the same!" you shout, and are answered by an echo from the direction of the shadow. "What he did—! What I'd do—!"
"What would you do?"
"I told you! Do to him what he did to my dad!"
"Why don't you do to him what he did to you?"
"You mean take something from him? Something he loved? I would!"
"Why don't you hurt him more than that?"
"I would! I will!"
"More than he hurt you?"
"Yes!"
"Could you come back from that?"
Your own voice echoes, even in the dense, suffocating clouds of this place. But the other voice though muffled, is very small and sounds very close, as though spoken by someone standing on your shoulder and speaking, very quietly, directly into your ear. "Could you come back from that?" it asks again.
"I— I suppose I couldn't," you admit.
"Would you even want to?"
"After I—? After what I'd do to him?" Something in your chest seems to slip as you imagine the enormity of the revenge you've promised. "Maybe not."
"If you couldn't find your way back, would you want someone to bring you back?"
"Who would do that?"
"Someone you would never expect!"
--
It is some time before you are aware that you are walking, stumbling, through that fog. The voice is gone now, and it is silent, as muffled as the dead hours of the night when you hide yourself under the blankets for fear of monsters. You don't know where you are going, or even if there is somewhere to go. Is this even a place? Given what you've seen, where you've been, who you've met, you can't even be sure you are anywhere. Certainly you're not in Margaret's parlor anymore, you've walked too far to still be there. So how can you find your way back?
Can I come back from this?
This place doesn't groan beneath the immense pressures you've come to associate with Margaret's parlor, but your chest does begin to feel tight. Is it possible to be lost in this place forever? Surely Charles wouldn't allow that! But does Charles even have any power here? Perhaps—and your chest tightens further—this is where bad little Stellae go, where they are cast out. I will make Blackwell pay! That is what you cried, and then, terrified, you wondered if Margaret heard. You feel nothing of her presence here. Is it now too late for you? Can nothing take you from here?
Someone could bring you back, said the voice. Was it talking about this place? You thought you were talking about Blackwell.
The dreadful thought intrudes again: Maybe I'm here now, because I said those things about Blackwell!
And if someone came, how would they find you in this murk? Maybe you should give up. First rule of Boy Scouts (you've heard) is to stop wandering when you're lost, so that you can be found. Maybe you should sit down and curl up and—
"Help! Help me! Please, help me, if anyone's there, if there's anyone here!"
Your heart beats wildly. You don't think you shouted that, but who else would have?
Then, like an answering echo, comes a single word: Here!
"Here?"
Here!
You run toward the thickest bank of fog, and that shadow you've been chasing rises up to meet you. You reach for it before it can escape you again, and in a rush of fear and delight find it looming at you. The mist thins into a silvery surface and the shadow resolves into—
You rear back in horror. It's Blackwell.
And he flinches from you.
Dumbly, you stare at each other, unmoving. You blink and he blinks. You lick your dry lips, and he licks his. You groan, and so does he.
Of course, you think. It's a mirage, and just the sort of cruel mirage you would find here. It was the subtext of that conversation you had with—who?—when you first opened your eyes inside this place. No hope of who coming back? Him? Or yourself?
"Well, come on," you tell your reflection gloomily, and it mouths the words back at you. "Either we get out of here together or we stay here together." You turn and walk side by side.
--
It's a very long walk, but it's never tiring. Occasionally you give your reprehensible twin a sidelong glance, and he does the same to you, but you never speak. How far will I have to go? one of you wonders, and the other answers, As far as necessary.
Finally you do begin to grow short of breath, and your feet begin to stumble. At first you think that exhaustion must be catching up to you. But the mist seems thinner, and something like hope, even anticipation, begins to spark in your breast. We seem to be climbing a mountain, you think. Maybe we'll come out of it at the top.
But the climb, though it never steepens, threatens never to end, and your strength is on the point of failing, when you put out your hand for support, and meet the hand of the professor putting out his. You hesitate, and so does he, and then you grab for each other. Leaning against each other's shoulders you push forward one ... two ... three more steps, and burst into the open at last.
An endless plain of white fog, like the top of a cloud bank, stretches toward every horizon. Above you is a dark, starless sky. But is it dark? Or is it an endless well, a bottomless ocean of light so immense that the ever-inrushing light can never succeed in filling it? And as for it being starless, there is one star above, a white disk that's a perfect circle.
You and Blackwell look at each other, and abruptly he slips away, vanishing but not vanishing. So I was brought back, you reflect to yourself, by someone I would have never expected.
And then you are flying toward the disk above. The cloud banks below fall away and fall away and fall away some more, but it takes ages until you see the limb of the sphere they encircle. But that is fine, for the sheer joy of levitation and weightlessness is upon you. The disk above grows very bright and very large, and you see that it is not a star but a vast mirror, and then you see that it is the Moon. You stretch your hands for it, then draw back, startled, when you see the reflection in its depths. You whirl to look behind you at the place from whence you've flown.
Saturn—ancient, heavy, hoary, but bejeweled with rings—floats in that well of ocean-dwelling light like a bubble.
Then you fall backward into the Moon and into waking.
--
There is darkness on the other side of the window. The parlor is warm but not stifling, close but not oppressive, and there seems to be very little heat coming off the crackling fire. But the oddest thing is that you have the room to yourself.
You creep out and down the hall, and are astonished to find Margaret, hunched and bundled up in about twenty shawls, sitting at the dining room table. Fyodor sits facing her. He is putting together a jigsaw puzzle.
You approach very carefully, and peer into Margaret's face. Her eyes are closed and her mouth open. She snores, once: "Hrkkt!"
Fyodor puts his finger to his lips, and motions you to silently follow him down the opposite hall to the sitting room. "So," he says in a soft voice after he has closed the door, "what will you do now?"
"Do?" you ask. "I don't know. What am I supposed to—?"
"What do you think?" He touches your heart with a horny forefinger.
"Well," you begin, doubtfully. "Margaret asked me—"
"She asked you nothing."
"What?"
"The little mother says nothing, almost never, inside her parlor. Besides, she has been with me, almost from the moment you passed through her door. Helping me with my puzzle." He expostulates in Russian. "She gets very peevish when I pick up a wrong piece!"
"But I was talking to her! And she was talking back! Asking me questions. At least—" You frown. "I thought she was." Now that you think about it, that voice you conversed with seemed to have no character. It was just ... a voice.
"Hmph." Fyodor looks unimpressed. "I'm always talking to myself too. Did you have a nice talk?"
You wince. "Yes. I don't feel like having it again, though. Not yet."
"That is well." He stifles a yawn. "You weren't in there long, but the little mother, she is wearying company even when she isn't trying to be."
He claps you on the shoulder. "And when I asked, What will you do now, I was hoping you'd say, 'Go to bed'."
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