The Sphere (39 page)

The butler comes in and whispers in my ear: “You must go. My master is too weak.”

I get up, confused—I don’t want to leave, everything in me is telling me that I still need the Count. My mind is buzzing with questions. I feel helpless, like I’ll never be able to find the way back on my own. The huge garden gate slams shut behind me with a thunderous crash. A great flock of black birds bursts out of the trees, startled into flight by the noise. I don’t know when or how I left the mansion.

I have to search—but where? What’s all this about following my light? My visit to the Count has only left me more bewildered. At least before I thought the solution was to steal Charon’s boat.

Dissie!

That voice again. That feeling of heat in my chest again. I don’t know why, but I find myself walking back to the harbor. The few boats I find there look abandoned. The mussels clinging to the rocks by the pier are open; I think they’ve all died. I hear the voice calling me insistently. It could be coming from my left, from the hill. Or maybe from my right, from the ocean. I walk along, trying to hear it again so I can walk toward the sound, but for a long time all I hear is the noise of my own footsteps and the creaking of the wooden boats as they gently nudge each other.

Eurydice!

The voice... It’s coming from the hill. I climb up slowly, still hearing my name. It’s not just one voice—there’s more than one person calling me. When I reach the top I find a stone wall, half in ruins, and a cemetery on the other side. Why didn’t Morgan and Sherlock tell me about this place? Do they not know about it? It certainly doesn’t look like it gets many visitors. The grass and wildflowers have reached an impressive height, and a lot of the gravestones are completely covered by creeping plants.

Dissie!

Now the voices are mingling with the sound of the sea. I can see East Sands in the distance, far off below me. This cemetery is abandoned, although a few of the tombs are tidy. Someone pulled up the plants covering them fairly recently.

I look around carefully. Many of them are high tombs made of stone, and getting to them is pretty easy. I move my hands over one, another, another. On one the stone is out of place; there’s a gap. I push hard and it topples over. I have to wait a few seconds for the dust to clear so I can look inside. My heart does a somersault when I see that this tomb, unlike the ones at the cathedral cemetery, is not empty. I’m not afraid. All I feel is a wild hope that I might be able to go home. Maybe solving the mystery is the price I have to pay to go back.

I stick my hand in without hesitation. My fingers brush gently against the thing inside—it feels like cardboard. It’s hard to touch it; most of it is pretty deep inside. I lean in, standing on tiptoe and stretching out one hand as far as I can while I hold onto the edge of the tomb with the other.

A sound is growing clearer and stronger above the noise of the ocean. It’s a kind of asthmatic breathing; the whistling of air struggling to move in and out of some misshapen or sick body. A gasping that’s coming louder and closer. Icy hands touch my back and shove me hard. The next thing I hear is the rough sound of rock against rock as the lid of the tomb slides back into place, trapping me in the darkness.

I recognize the sound of powerful wings from the other disappearances, and then the sound recedes, leaving me sunk in the deepest possible silence.

––––––––

I
’m running out of air. I stopped yelling a while ago. I know I need to conserve my energy. For the first few moments I tore my throat up screaming for them to open the tomb again, but then I accepted that as long as the kidnappers are here I won’t be able to get out.

I heard wings flapping loudly. I felt cold hands shove me. I’m sure they were human hands—strange, harder than usual, but human. Now something makes me feel certain that the missing Sphereans have been kidnapped, they haven’t died, like I thought before. They must have them trapped somewhere like they’ve done to me, somewhere Sherlock and Morgan haven’t even thought of. How can my companions be so useless? I thought they were supposed to know all about the Sphere.

I don’t know why I’ve stopped fearing that the missing people might be dead. Somehow I feel like the world I’m in is indestructible. Unfortunately, I know I’m not. I’m aware of my vulnerability. I start to laugh, softly at first, then more loudly, until I’m howling with laughter. It’s all so absurd. I got so angry with Beatrice and with the Count for not helping me get back to my world, and now it’s possible that I won’t ever see the Sphere again, either. This makes all my worrying—both before and after the Sphere—seem ridiculous. In this darkness nothing matters anymore: what a misfit I am, the accident, this colorless world that has taken shape little by little... even the way I’ve come to care for the Sphereans. And the most absurd thing of all is this idea that Sherlock and I could have had something together, when he doesn’t even seem to have feelings at all.

“We’re not flat.” Why have the Count’s words come to mind just now? Flat—what did he mean?

The image of Axel gets stuck in my mind again. That morning on the beach, the last conversation we had. Actually, it was the first real conversation we ever had. If we had known it was going to be the last, would that have changed anything? Until then I’d never seen what Axel was like inside. That spark of sadness that flickered for a second in his eyes whenever I complained about my family turned out to have deep and tangled roots, from which, paradoxically, happiness had sprung. Axel is much more complex than I could ever have imagined. That morning on the beach the look on his face had upset me, made me wonder if there really was something inside him that he was hiding for some reason. And there was, of course there was—but now I know that things aren’t so simple. Axel has thousands of shades.
Life
has thousands of shades. How ironic, that I had to lose it in order to realize that! How ironic that it took not being able to see Axel to make me feel with the force of a hurricane that yes, he was right, life is not black and white, and nobody is an island.

“Life’s not black and white,” he said to me.

“Can’t you think of something better to say than that?” I answered. “You always come up with the same ‘it’s not black and white’—it makes you sound like a grandpa. Even my father isn’t that tiresome. Can’t you just
be
? Do you always have to start getting philosophical about life?”

“What about you—do you always have to be such a child?”

I looked away. I knew he wanted to provoke me; he was always trying to. He took my hands. I could feel the touch of the sand and see the grains sparkling in the sun between my fingers and his. We were sitting on those solitary rocks with the sea beside us.

“What happened to your mother?” I asked, without knowing how I’d dared. There it was—it had just slipped out.

“She died when she and my father were celebrating their anniversary.”

I was immediately sorry I had asked. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear what had happened. But Axel didn’t seem too upset.

“He wanted to surprise her with something special,” he went on, “so he got her a trip to Italy. They’d always wanted to go to Tuscany. She didn’t want to go. What my grandmother told me was that her dream had been to go to Tuscany with my father, but not then, not anymore. It was an idea she’d already given up on.”

“Why?”

“She didn’t want to leave me alone, though I wasn’t really going to be alone—my father’s parents took care of me. I don’t know if she somehow had a premonition about what was going to happen. I’ve always wondered if there are people who can sense tragedy coming. Anyway, my mother begged my father to return the tickets, to stay home. But they went. I spent years imagining over and over again how it happened, writing every possible story in my mind. The good thing about not knowing what it was like was that I could change the ending in my imagination. I imagined millions of versions where my parents came back home together. Later, unfortunately, I found out what had happened, and I couldn’t rewrite the ending in my mind anymore. I heard my grandmother yelling at my father, trying for the millionth time to get him to come out of his shell. She was sick of seeing her son acting like the living dead. She shouted that it wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t anyone’s fault that the railing had given way, except maybe the hotel owners’.”

I couldn’t look away from Axel’s eyes. I was squeezing his hands tightly in mine.

“They were dancing in their room,” Axel continued. “I can imagine my mother, with her long hair down, beautiful, I remember her perfectly—even her scent.”

“How old were you?”

“Six, but I swear I remember her like I just saw her yesterday. I can picture her dancing with my father, if I close my eyes I can see them both. I can hear the music and see my mother’s smile—she loved to dance. I can see her feet moving lightly, weightlessly around the room.”

I closed my eyes. I could see her, too. Axel had transported me to Tuscany with his words. I saw the room with the high ceilings and the open window, I felt the warmth of the evening, and I smelled the fresh air of the countryside. I saw her alabaster skin, her flowered dress, the high-heeled shoes moving elegantly across the floor. I felt myself spinning to the rhythm of the music. I could see the stars like pinpricks scattered across the dark sky. I felt my heart bursting with happiness and then I felt the wood splinters beneath my hands, the balcony railing, the moment of vertigo just before realizing something unstoppable had begun to happen.

“My mother went out to the balcony. The railing collapsed. They couldn’t do anything.”

“How can you?” The question came suddenly from the bottom of my heart, my voice rough.

“How can I what?” asked Axel.

“All of it. Always be so happy. How can you...?”

“Keep from doing what my father does? Maybe it’s because I’ve seen up-close the way he gave up on life. I don’t want that for myself. He stopped working, stopped going out, even stopped talking to me. I don’t plan on losing myself to bitterness. My mother would never have wanted that.”

“Who took care of you?”

“My grandparents. Ever since my parents went on that trip, I was never far from my grandparents. Until they were gone, too. First my grandmother, then my grandfather.”

“Do you miss them?”

“Every single day. But not with any regret, or any anger. They lived every second up until the end. They didn’t give up like my father.”

I hugged Axel as hard as I could, not out of pity, but because my heart had grown too big for my body. Now, closed in this tomb, I remember it all perfectly. I finally understand what Axel did for me that morning on the beach. He made my problems lighter. He wanted to show me that above all, you’ve got to live. Now I see clearly why I could never break things off with him for good. I’m proud of him. I felt that way even before I came to the Sphere, though I didn’t realize it then. I’ve always been proud of him. His way of living, his ability to put up with my ups and downs, to love me in spite of myself. Living—that’s what Axel knows how to do best.

“You’re never sad?”

“Of course—who isn’t? But there’s no reason for it to last, that’s the important thing, I guess.”

“I guess,” I said thoughtfully. “Yeah, that must be the important thing. For people who can.”

“For people who can?” Axel looked at me, waiting for more words.

“You know, for people who can keep their sadness from lasting. I can’t.”

“Because you try so hard to hold onto it. I’ve seen you—you must be exhausted. It’s easier to let it go.”

“How?”

“Just do it. Just let it go. Sadness is like a balloon. It only stays with you if you hold onto it. But if you open your hands and set it free, it goes away.”

A loud noise pulls me away from my memories. It’s the flapping wings, the same ones as always. There’s no doubt.

“Useless... can’t you do anything right? I asked you for very specific characters. My instructions were quite clear. And what have you brought me? You’re worthless, all of you—worthless scum!”

I hear the sound of a hammer and chisel and then a stone being dragged until it falls to the floor. I can feel the vibrations of its impact from inside the tomb.

“Throw them over there. And take careful note, unless you want to be next.”

I prick up my ears but I can’t hear anyone trying to shout. I was hoping to hear a voice muffled by a gag or something like that, but I hear nothing except the sound of some things falling into the tomb that they just opened... Are they things? They don’t sound like bodies. I hope with all my heart it’s just things, and not people. A shrill sound, half weeping, half harsh laughter, echoes from the gravestones.

“I don’t know why I bother warning you. It would be too much to ask for you to have feelings, just too precious if you were afraid. How could you be frightened? If you have no
souls
.”

That creature, its voice... I can’t even imagine it.

“I’m a failure...”

The voice is small and high-pitched, but still rough and full of bitterness.

“I’m a failure! I curse all of creation! Do you hear me? I curse creation!”

The screaming makes my skin crawl. The words, roared into the wind, bounce off the stones and return in a deafening wave to the creature that shouted them. The sound recedes, like a tape recording played backwards, the words stretching out and losing their shape. I know even without seeing it that the unpleasant guttural sound is the creature swallowing down its own words—literally. The Sphere didn’t just stop at the curse. For a while the only thing I can hear is a cough followed by loud retching.

“Aaaaah!... I’ll kill you all! All of you! Soulless things... die, once and for all!”

After the screaming I hear a loud blast.
That thing
, whatever it is, has launched an attack on the winged creatures. It sounds like complete chaos, a riot of running footsteps, flapping wings, a flat banging that sounds like sheets of metal. More than once the fight tumbles over the tomb where I’m trapped. I can hear blows falling right on top of me, and faltering breath that sounds like it’s being forced through a tube. Finally the thud of dead weight very close to me brings the fight to an end.