Chapter 32

32.

         She’s gone.
         As the sun rose higher in the day, he had gone back to the house. To find her. Because he knew she was there. She had always loved the house and in the end the house hadn’t let her leave. It had taken her life before it would let her go. So instead it allowed him to escape, but not before punching this giant hole in his heart that he could feel the sun shining right through. Except everything was cold. The heat was there but not touching him. It shied away, tentative, as if he might draw it into himself and take it away.
         They told him not to go. In voices he couldn’t hear. Their gestures meant everything, but it was nothing more than street theatre to him. It meant nothing. The man argued with him for a long time, his voice low and insistent, barely breaking into the trees around them. His words were structured gibberish, falling into the great sucking hole in his chest and never seen again. It was their right, of course, to say such things. They could say whatever they wished, as long as they did not stop him.
         And they did not. But someone had to go, the other man insisted. He had wanted the boy to go, but the boy only sat there with dark eyes and sullen face and said nothing for or against the idea. That disappointed him. That’s not how he had brought him up. He had always told the boy to stand up and speak his mind, so when the time came, there would be no doubt on which side you stood. If the boy had problems with him going, he should have said. If he agreed, he should have said. He did neither. It wasn’t right. He had raised him better than that. But he said nothing. It was the boy’s decision, after all.
         It didn’t matter. He had to go, and so the other man went with him. He wanted to make it fast. But it was all about taking the proper time to do things. All his life he had never rushed. When you pushed things, that’s when it all fell apart and instead of having more of something, you were left with only nothing. He had always understood things to be that way and it had always been true. The rules of life didn’t change. No matter what the world tried to do to them. They didn’t bend or break or shatter or snap. Not like people. The rules shaped us and we were all too fragile right from the mold. It didn’t take much to destroy a person. But that was the way things went. That was the risk you ran by being born. There was always an exit if you wanted to take it. He would never. The exit would come for him soon enough. No need to rush anything. There were things that needed to be done.
         So they went out from the forest and down a hill and to his house, without pause and without being seen. The air was quiet. The sun reminded him of how chilled he felt. Like he would never be warm again. The other man kept asking him if he was okay, if he really wanted to do this. He only looked at the other man and said nothing. There was nothing to say. She was dead and the only one he wanted to speak to. He had much to tell her. So much he had never said. The finality of the day kept evading him.
         But the sun shining and the fresh air and the man at his side and the silence of his son and quiet giant man and the ruin that was his home and the quivering empty feeling in his stomach and his hands that wouldn’t stop shaking and feeling that momentum alone was still carrying him all served to remind him that he was still alive and she was not alive and none of the facts were changing. But facts could be wrong. Facts were not true things.
         But she was a true thing. A true death. She was gone.
         There were too many things to say, and no one to say them to.
         He had built his home in the waning days of his youth, before he had taken a wife. The home was far too large for him, something she had said when he first brought her there. It’s too big, she had said, somewhat in awe. Why do you live in such a big house?
         Because, he had said, with some satisfaction, I was waiting for you. For someone like you.
         He had carved his name into the front door, and when she had come he had shown her how to put her name into the door. He remembered how steady her hand had been. Right there she made her first mark on him. The years had worn it smooth, but the impression was still there, if your fingers searched enough. Life couldn’t hide, not from a persistent effort. It existed and it persisted and in living it gave itself away.
         The front door was gone now. He didn’t see it. He didn’t remember where the front door of his home used to be.
         He had to find it. His life began there, and her life ended there and it had to be found. There was so much he needed to tell her. So many things she had never known. So many lies.
         Baress had never stopped dreaming.
         And last night, Baress dreamed about Prescotte.
         And he could look at the other man and know his life.
         A curtain went up on a theatre running in pantomime in his brain. He saw Prescotte standing in a large room infested with opulence, kneeling before an old man in fine robes, a helmet tucked in his arm, a sword at his side, wearing a scuffed uniform. The old man was sitting on a high backed chair, with armed men on either side, and a pretty young woman standing nearby who vaguely resembled him. The old man was speaking but there was no sound. The scene was frozen, caught in a bubble of lost time. These moments when they exist are unique, and can never be replicated. Before the year was out, everyone in the room except for Prescotte would be dead. Baress could watch them, from behind a wall of invisible glass, fading out one by one, leaving Prescotte standing alone, oblivious, already moving on without knowing what he was moving on to.
         He saw Prescotte in the center of a small village, surrounded by proud men with hard faces, saw him kiss a woman that had to be his bride, pick her up and spin her around, both of their faces trapped in a spasm of laughter.
         He saw Prescotte throw the same woman out of his bed, sending a concealed dagger spinning into the air and across the floor, moving in elongated slow-time, catching the light with every rotation, glinting with a foresight that no one else was aware of, not striking the ground until its twin, concealed in her other hand, had been turned upon its owner and buried in the heart. Prescotte only stood there, covered in the blood of the woman he had pledged to protect forever while she went into a paroxysm of dying and removed herself from his presence forever. He would never know exactly why.
         So you know too , Baress thought, you know what it can do.
         And he saw Prescotte riding with a man with nothing but death in his eyes, who wore dark clothing and a black cape and sported blood on his hands that nobody saw. He saw the man become his comrade and his friend and his liege and then the entire scene slid into oblivion, slit through with jagged light, claws attempting to tear away pain and only creating more agony.
         And just before Baress woke up, he had a final glimpse, of a burning city with a broken sky that was nowhere and right above his head and a mere step sideways and Prescotte and the giant man running away from a spectral thing he could not see and he was weary and he was resolute and it was clear he would not win.
         The scene went black and Baress would know no more. Unless he asked Prescotte. But he did not. They were only dreams. These were not facts. The truth did not matter.
         They picked through the rubble. The area was absolutely quiet. Bodies softly decomposed, some clearly having died violent deaths, some appearing to be merely asleep. Most were men, some were women. Some were burned, or stabbed, or beaten, or killed in the many ways that people could be killed. If he cared, it might have been frightening, but emotion started in the head and went down to the heart and right now all the emotion was draining onto his skin from his chest, running down his stomach, onto his legs and pooling at his feet. There were only one way to enter and an endless amount of methods to leave. It was simple. She was here. Somewhere. She was gone. The walls weren’t even standing, upright monuments erected by primitive people, trying to reach the detached deities that ruled their lives. But no one was there. There was nowhere to go. His father had told him that, in a place, in a dream, in a time that he could remember, telling him that he had to do his best because all that he saw and that he felt were all he would ever get. There is nothing else, said his father’s voice. And when something is gone, it is truly gone. You shall never see its like again. And it was true. She was gone. She was not coming back.
         Finding the stairs was an aid to finding the front door. They used to lead right into the entryway. Sometimes he used to come home after dark and stand in that doorway and look up the stairs and see the tiny shadowed form of his son, sitting at the top of the stairs, waiting for him, or waiting for nothing at all. The fragile silence in those moments was frozen time, where if you knew the right way to stand and breath the second might just last forever. But it always ended. Everything always does.
         As the day reached its peak and began the long journey to waning, the two of them found the door. It was covered under crumbling rubble and burnt bodies. It was there she had died. The pile was up to his knees. It smelled of evaporating memories, freed from their all too brittle shells, seeping into the air, pushing at his head, trying to get in. But there was no more room. He needed spare for her. To keep her safe.
         Something unspoken passed between him and the other man and together they began to clear what used to be the doorway.
         And in the fluid glass that separated the portions of his mind from each other, another dream broke through.
         It was of Valreck.
         In the desert, it was, was Valreck, walking across crisp sand in the shadows of a brilliant sun, walking with another man he did not recognize, a slight, pale man with hard eyes who moved with a jagged, sinuous grace. With limited vision, he could see the shadows of many others, moving in entwined time, sinking into the sand even as the sun grew brighter. It was coming. For all of them. It was coming. And they never knew.
         Walking they were, with low voices they were talking. Valreck kept his eyes on the ground, as if pretending the other man was not there. The other man was already talking, his voice condensing from the air, forming insidious droplets.
         We have to leave soon, that man said, his words a blunt growl. People are talking, thinking that something is going to happen. Something good. I don’t think so. Whatever it is, it’s going to be bad. I know it is.
         Valreck said nothing.
         You know it too, his companion insisted, stopping just short of touching him. And you’ve got better sources than me. So why are we still here?
         How many do we have, Valreck finally said.
         Counting you and me? Five. You know who. They’re all ready. They’ve been ready.
         Not all.
         Who? Oh, that other guy? What’s his problem?
         He’s not ready. He will not leave. He is committed to staying here. Valreck’s hands were balled into loose fists, matching the sandpaper frustration etched into his voice. The other man only stared at him without understanding.
         So? Let him stay. It’s his decision. What it’s to you?
         It is not his decision, Valreck insisted with a sharp hiss. That is what I am working on. I cannot leave until I am sure.
         I see, the other man said. The bright sunlight seemed to warp his features, change them into something else. But listen, this was your idea, and we’re all ready to get the hell out of here-
         I will not abandon my friend purely for the sake of expedience. He was breathing faster for some reason. In the desert, everything was precious. He is the catalyst for this, and I will not leave him behind for reasons he has no control over.
         And what if you can’t convince him? What then? Are you going to sacrifice yourself and four other people because this one guy is stubborn? You think that’s right?
         Valreck was silent for a long period. No, he admitted finally, his words slow and barely slurred. No, it would not be right.
         So what are you going to do? the other man demanded.
         Valreck looked down, then to the sky and then to his companion, who stared at him expectantly.
         We will wait, he said. A few more days will not make a difference either way. There is still time.
         And if you still can’t convince your friend? the man asked again.
         We will see, was all Valreck said. We will see.
         And the dream receded, to take its place in his head, shoving aside his memories. Sometimes he was afraid that was the point of the dreams, to take the place of his own memories and leave him with nothing more than the thoughts and despairs and lives of others, all rattling around in his brain, all trying to turn him into someone else. He didn’t know why it was happening. He didn’t know why it was happening to him.
         There was so much Baress did not know about the world. He had been aware of that ever since he was a child. It was one of the reasons he became a farmer, because getting close to the land, it helped him understand what made the land work, the cycles of growth, the effects of weather, the lives of animals, there were so many things he had to learn to run the farm, to build his house, to buy and sell and prosper and do what only now felt natural. And it was a sobering thought that even if he learned all the knowledge there was to know about farming and building houses and selling crops, it would only be the smallest part of the smallest percentage of all the knowledge in the world. For all he had learned, it was nothing compared to the total mass. There was just no time. He woke up every morning and felt his body getting older and slower and breaking down fragment by fragment by fragment and he was in a great losing race, trying to find a comfortable position between knowledge and ignorance and he couldn’t find the right place and it chafed at him, this not knowing. And there was nothing he could do about it.
         He had told her about it, late one night, when she was about to deliver their first child. He had been nervous and had started talking and there had been no way to stop. In the end, when his words had exhausted themselves, she had looked at him and taken his hand and placed it on her bulging stomach and said to him, you will never know and you will never stop trying to know for as long as you live and that makes you ignorant and that makes me just as ignorant and I love you for it.
         Baress was sure that’s what she had said. It was raining that night, now he remembered, and her words had been muffled and distorted by the storm. The baby had kicked, in that moment, whether in response to his words or her words or the crackling woodnoise of a lightning bolt, he could not know. In that time, it didn’t matter.
         They found her, he and Prescotte, by the door, just where she had fallen. A piece of an arrow was still lodged in her throat, but the shaft had broken. It was not her only wound. Prescotte went to remove it but Baress stopped him. Let it be, he said. She’s had enough. Let it be.
         In a strange, frozen way, she was still beautiful. Her face was turned to the side and her eyes were closed, as if flinching from a blow that never came. Blood encrusted the edges of her mouth and her neck and onto her chest. Her body had been crushed from the weight of all those above her and when they lifted her there was no weight to her at all and it felt like she was filled with broken glass. Seeing like that didn’t feel real. She was some child’s doll, played with too roughly and left to be discarded. He had seen his mother die and he had seen his father die, both in bed, with their bodies intact, their breathing halted, their presences gone. And his father had been right, life left nothing behind. Not a voice or a touch or a taste and eventually not even a body. Memories were nothing more than malleable projections, warped by time and having no more relation to the source than an imperfect copy reflects upon the original.
         But she deserved better than this. Prescotte had offered to help bury her but Baress declined. No, he said, I have to do this myself. He had known he would do this and had wanted the boy here for that reason. But the boy hadn’t come and so he had to do it himself. It wouldn’t be right to make a stranger do what the family needed to do. It wouldn’t be right. If there was no right in the world then there was no world at all. That’s just the way it was.
         And so Prescotte agreed and he said he would search the house and see if anything else turned up. He went away and Baress was left with her. On the ground he found a shovel, the handle broken but enough left that he could use it. The soil was hard but he kept hammering at it until the ground broke and eventually it began to yield and a hole began to take shape. If he could not live here and this house would eventually be gone there needed to be some kind of memory left behind to mark that they had once been here. They had bled for the house and she had died for the home and here she would stay. She was gone and she would stay.
         As the dirt piled and the hole deepened, he felt rubble shift within his head and a dream bubbled forth. Was it even a dream anymore, or simply a waking memory of someone else? He had the sense that these events, these captured moments, had happened before, that there was nothing he could do about it. That they didn’t take place on this world but on other worlds in other places and they were speaking of things he would not know and would never have any conception of. That did not distress him. He could not know everything on this world and he accepted that and surely he could accept not knowing everything on other worlds. It was the way it had to be. He could content himself with glimpses of memories of dreams and watch them without knowing and without understanding.
         And as the soil flew over his head, adding to the pile, a dream broke free, twisting in an invisible wind, pulled in all directions, a vision on every surface.
         It was the lightdark shadings of a tent. There was no one inside. Outside he could hear the gentle howl of a brisk wind and the scattered patter of sand striking the cloth.
         Light flooded the tent briefly as the flap opened and a man stepped in. His face was unfamiliar but there was an upset nervousness about him. Once in the tent he dropped to his knees and covered his face in his hands. His shoulders were shaking but there was no sound.
         I can’t leave, the man said from behind his hands, his voice muffled. I know what he wants and why he wants it but I just can’t leave. Dropping his hands to the ground, he looked at the floor, murmuring, Lords, what do I do? I do not know what to do.
         In that moment there was a rustle from nowhere. A shadow fell over him, darkening his face so that only his eyes were clear.
         Confusion reigned there, replaced by recognition.
         What do you want, the man said to the man he couldn’t see. What do you-
         And the shadow moved forward and a hand that wasn’t there moved up and then came down and there was nothing more to see.
         Baress regarded the hole he had dug and felt no emotions at all. She was gone. She would not come back. He would never know another woman. Those were not promises or vows or threats but facts and certainties. He hated facts but inevitably they always wound up being true.
         She was gone but he needed to put her away. To the hole, to the earth, to be covered in sleep. He thought he should say a prayer, to the gods, to her, to the air. To keep her safe. But he didn’t. There was nothing to say. Nobody would hear. Nobody that he wanted to say anything to.
         The snap of footsteps behind him didn’t force him to turn around. Two shadows fell on him, one longer and far darker than the other.
         Baress turned to see Prescotte and the giant man staring at him. The giant man’s expression was somehow easier to read. Prescotte had seen too much and there was no frame of reference to compare with him anymore.
         Your son, Prescotte said, his speech unhurried but his stance jittery. He was always ready for a fight, not because he wanted one, but because he expected it. It was the world where he had come from. It was the life he had lived. He couldn’t escape its gravity. Baress, I’m afraid your son . . .
         Baress said nothing.
         He is gone, intoned the giant man. He has run away. Your son is gone.
         Baress stared at the ground, at the empty hole matching the one in his chest. So the boy had run. It made sense, in his own way. The boy had always been like that.
          What do you want to do? Prescotte asked. He’s gone.
         Baress looked at him one more time.
         Finally, he said, slowly and simply, No.
         And went back to putting his wife into the ground.