Eleanor (25 page)

The keeper’s valley is an open wound, doomed to scratch itself until it bleeds and bleeds.

She prefers it this way.
 

She knows something of pain.
 

The keeper crests a small rise, and the trees here have thinned. She turns and looks at the valley sprawling behind her. Her cabin is a speck in the distance, a thread of smoke rising from the chimney. She wonders if it will burn down while she is gone. She almost laughs at the idea. Her cabin, suddenly in the middle of a great lake, burning to cinders.
 

Oh, well. If a spark leaps from the fireplace onto the rug and takes her cabin, it is no concern. She will build another one.
 

She looks beyond the cabin. What interests her is not the smoke or the rug or the fireplace, but the beasts.

They lumber down from the mountains at the farthest end of the valley, framed against the morbid gray sky. Their heavy steps are silent at this distance. The largest beast comes down first, her head and neck lost in the clouds. The mountains are no challenge to her, and she steps almost gracefully down their slopes as the keeper watches.
 

The second, smaller beast follows, its gait broken. Its limp has grown more pronounced—or perhaps it just seems that way because of the steep incline that it must negotiate.
 

Even from this distance the keeper can tell that one of the beast’s legs is horribly wounded.
 

“What happened to you?” she wonders aloud.
 

She knows that the beasts will bed down somewhere in the valley, where the river was before it swelled and merged with the new lake. They don’t seem to mind sleeping in the water. To them it is only a puddle. That they are visible to her even here, more than a hundred miles north, is a testament to their stunning size. When they lie down for the night, she will know. The earth will shake beneath her feet, even this far away. Needles will tumble from the trees. Standing water will ripple and churn.
 

But she is perplexed by their movements. The beasts should be migrating south, not there already. That they are that far south now is a curiosity, an irregularity. That they appear to be marching north is unusual, and she is concerned.
 

The keeper senses that the world around her has fallen out of time with itself.

The plane’s wreckage is a marbled glow beyond the trees. It turns the branches and needles gold as night falls.

“This is her fault,” the keeper says. “That damned child.”

That damned child, indeed, leaping from dream world to dream world as if she were some sort of damp, fresh god, born just moments before, toddling about in the dark and wrecking everything, ignorant of the destruction in her wake.
 

The keeper has never encountered anything like the girl before.
 

She turns to her shadow, thin and barely visible in the falling dark.
 

“Have you?” she asks. “Have you seen anything like her before?”

Her shadow does not answer, but it does not need to.
 

“No,” the keeper mutters. “No, she is something new.”

She begins to climb again, intent on reaching the wreckage before midnight.

Eleanor is quiet during the car ride to her father’s apartment. The car sways and bumps over the wet asphalt, triggering a strange new sensation, one of being unhitched from the world that passes by, as if Eleanor rides on some current that moves at a different pace from the rest of the universe. She rests her head against the passenger window. The glass is cool and pleasant on her skin. It grounds her, a little.
 

Paul drives carefully, a little more slowly than usual. He is still quiet himself, but he casts sideways glances at Eleanor as he drives.
 

Finally he says, “Penny for your thoughts?”

Eleanor gives him a half-smile, but nothing more.
 

Paul coasts to a stop at a red light, and it changes almost immediately, casting a sickly green glow on Eleanor’s skin.

“Are you worried about your mom?” he asks. “I left her a message.”

Eleanor doesn’t look at him. “I’m always worried about her.”

Paul sighs. “She’s drinking again. Isn’t she.”

Eleanor doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to. Agnes hasn’t stopped drinking in years.
 

“I’m sure she knows you’re safe,” Paul says.

“Not likely,” Eleanor says, in a voice so quiet she can barely hear it herself.

“What?”

“I said I’m sure she does.”

Paul nods, then says, “You know it’s killing me, right?”

Eleanor lifts her head off the glass. “What’s killing you?”

“Not knowing what happened,” he says. “I don’t know what’s happening with you, and it scares me.”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” Eleanor says.
 

“I know,” Paul says. He shifts in his seat so that he’s facing her, just a little. “I know you don’t want to, but—Ellie, I can’t
not
know. You’re my little girl.”

Eleanor doesn’t say anything.

“This is serious,” he says. “Don’t you realize—”

“Of course I realize that,” Eleanor snaps. “It happened to
me
.”

Paul falls silent, and Eleanor immediately feels guilty.
 

“I mean—it must have been the most awful thing for you—” she says.
 

“It was,” Paul interrupts. “It was exactly the most awful thing ever, Ellie. If I prayed, then I would pray every day and every night that you never have to go through anything like this. This has been the worst year ever.”

Eleanor feels his words like a fist. “The worst,” she says, aware of a hollow inside her chest. “No. It isn’t the worst.”

Paul opens his mouth, then closes it. “I—I didn’t mean—”

“And I did go through it, Dad,” Eleanor says. “Do you think I
wanted
to? Do you think I have any idea—”

She falls quiet, and sulks in the passenger seat, suddenly angry with her father. How could he make this about him?
 

“Goddammit,” Paul says. He thumps his palms on the steering wheel in frustration. “Goddammit, Eleanor. I wiped your bottom. I gave you baths. You used to run around in circles and then throw your arms around my knees and say, ‘Dada, up.’ If you ever got hurt, it
killed
me—so do you know what it felt like to find out that you were just—just gone?”

Eleanor folds her arms and slides down in her seat.

“It felt like someone ripped my bones out,” Paul says. “Like I couldn’t stand up. I was imagining my little girl—my baby girl, just knee-high—out there
all alone
.”

“I’m not your baby girl anymore,” she says. “I’m not knee-high. I’m taller than Mom.”

“You know what I mean, El—”

“Stop making this about you!” she says. “Who
are
you?”

Paul blinks, startled.
 

“Take me home,” she says.
 

“We’re going home,” Paul answers, reeling.

“Not
your
home,” Eleanor says, teeth flashing. “
My
home. The one that
I
didn’t
leave
.”

Paul is silent, and for a moment Eleanor feels a cold crush of regret, but then Paul smacks his hand on the dashboard,
hard
, and says, “Does your mother even ask you about your day when you come home from school? Is she ever
coherent?
Do you have to feed her like a fu—like a
baby?
Is she even really your mother anymore?
”

“I want to go home,” Eleanor says quietly.
 

“
My
home,” Paul barks, and then his voice drops to a growl. “You’ll stay in
my
home on
my
weekends, and this is
my
weekend.”

Eleanor doesn’t answer him. She sits in the pale dashboard light, staring straight ahead into the dark, and Paul seethes behind the wheel.

“Your mother can take care of herself,” he adds. His nostrils flare when he says it.

Eleanor says, softly, “No, she can’t.”

Paul swings the wheel and the car thumps up the ramp into the apartment parking lot. He pulls into his assigned space and turns the key, and the engine cuts out, and the car falls into a tense hush. He sits still for a moment, his hand frozen on the key, and then he exhales in a rush and turns to Eleanor. His eyes soften, and he starts to talk, but Eleanor just pushes the door open and climbs out, and closes it behind her.
 

She’s halfway up the stairs before her father can open his door to follow. She can hear him trudge up the stairs behind her. She knows what he had hoped for tonight—a comfortable evening, one that would restore the balance of things. A bowl of soup, a Saturday-night movie. She would fall asleep on the couch and he would put a blanket over her. He would feel like a good parent, and Eleanor would be safe.
 

There will be none of that tonight.

She turns out the light in the bedroom that will never feel like hers, and climbs into the bed that still doesn’t feel broken in, and pulls the blankets up to her chin. She sees her father’s shadow interrupt the sliver of light beneath the bedroom door. He lingers there for a minute, then two, and she hears him mumble something, then shuffle away.
 

She remembers a brighter time, sometimes. When her mother was young and stern, but happy, most of the time, and her father would come home from work and shrug off the weight of his day and Eleanor would wait for the sound of the attic door opening, and follow him upstairs to watch him build entire worlds out of sticks and paper.
 

Now it seems like all anybody ever does is tear the world apart.

A bowl of chocolate ice cream. Coca-Cola poured over the top, the cold scoops crusted over, caramel brown. Eleanor taps at the brittle layer with her spoon, satisfied by the tiny cracking sound it makes.
 

“That’s no kind of breakfast,” her father says, yawning.

“It’s all you have,” she says, without looking up.
 

“That’s not—” he says, but then he opens the refrigerator and stops. “Yeah. It’s all I have.”