Secret Places and Hidden Things

Chapter Twenty-Three

He sat quietly, watching the water in his mind. The water was deep, but the bottom could be seen clearly. This water had been here his whole life. Sometimes he forgot to watch it and heavy stones would fall in, or a breeze would ripple the surface and dazzle him with reflections. This had happened much less as time had gone by. He didn't think it would happen again.

The pool of water melted away as he opened his eyes. There was a wooden floor beneath him and autumn leaves drifting by. Silver-barked trees faded into the mist, painting broad strokes of gold and red in the wind as they shook their leaves. A woman was with him. She was watching her hands.

She reached out slowly and caught at the wind with long fingers. A smile drifted delicately across her face. The wind escaped and played with her hair before dancing with a few leaves nearby. She didn't mind the wind; it had always escaped. That was part of the game they played. Sometimes the wind was cords to pluck, sometimes it was cloth to touch or water to push. She closed her eyes for a moment, just to feel it better. It blew wetly in her ear and laughed.

She put her palms out in front of her, and the colors in her fingers glowed against the lacquered wood. The boards were rough, and gritty, and she listened to the sound they made as she moved to stand. Just this small effort was a reward. Her muscles stretched. Her legs unfolded. The white and yellow dress she wore slid along her skin. She brought her arms above her head, if only to continue the motion, and the wind gladly followed, pulling her strange hair high and weaving it into the mist.

He followed with his eyes. She was fire and he was earth. Sometimes, when they danced, the wood cracked beneath their feet. Today, the wood was mostly silent. Only the leaves were talking.

He stood like she did, slowly. He could smell the water in the air. The wind was kind and brought it to him, beading the mist on his brow. He placed his feet carefully, the wood heavy and soft against his skin.

The two began to walk. He was pale and dark and thin. She was vivid, her bright hair flowing around her like fire, the white within it like burning ash. They said nothing, but spoke nonetheless.

"Where is the day going?" one of them asked.

"I don't know," one of them responded.

The mist echoed their thoughts, floating silently around them like the wake of a boat, parting across their skin at the last second, swirling in circles behind them only to reunite and hide their passage completely.

The forest disappeared and opened onto a sunlit hillside. The mist faded to nothing behind them.

"I've been here before," the boy said.

The woman just nodded.

They walked quietly to the top of the hill, crunching over fallen leaves. The boy sat beneath a great maple, overwhelmed by nostalgia.

He looked far off into the distance, and suddenly the sky disappeared into blackness. He turned away quickly, full of terror, but the woman comforted him with a smile.

"Don't be afraid," she said with two voices, "it's just potential. This is the beginning."

He looked again, and the sunset he could see in the corner of his eye was swallowed by an endless nothing. It stretched across his vision like a black vacuum.

"It's so vast—" A gasp stole the breath from his voice. He couldn't look away and in a moment he was carried off into the endless night.

***

Two companions found themselves floating on a small island of grass, surrounded by a bleak and empty nothingness. A great maple stood behind them like a guardian, its exposed roots trailing away far below into the abyss. From somewhere above them, a strong light made their small world resplendent, black shadows throwing everything into black relief.

Jack stirred. He was sitting with his legs over the edge, staring down into the void. He turned to his side where a woman was sitting, curling a strand of her long hair around a finger. She looked ageless, with streaks of brilliant red in her gray hair.

"How long have we been here?" he asked her.

"Ages, millennia, seconds," she responded slowly. "This is the end."

"Why are we here?"

She turned to him, a line forming between her brows. "It took me a long time to remember. You're broken, Jack. You did it all wrong. Everyone else lives their lives in a straight line, but you've broken the rules. There's a paradox and now we have to fix it."

Jack wondered for a moment what she could mean, but then he remembered. There were things before. Whole lives before. Lives he'd forgotten many times.

"So, I've been moving through time?"

The woman shook her head. "No. Time doesn't exist that way."

"What's the paradox, then?" he asked, perplexed.

"You are the paradox, Jack. You've shattered yourself into pieces..." She sighed. "I don't really know how to explain it to you."

Jack tried to understand what she was saying. It was difficult. His memories seemed to be piled on top of each other. He could hardly remember anything at all.

"The truth is, you were lonely, Jack. You cut yourself in half just to find someone who might care about you. It had to end eventually. I think you knew this deep down, but you couldn't let it go." Her face quaked a moment, and she looked away. "I can understand why you did it. Something like this happened to me as well. My motives were different, though..." She trailed off, lost in her own memories.

"How can we fix it?" Jack asked. He felt hollow. All of his memories were lies. It had only ever been him. He had wandered by himself all that time. There was no Jack. There was no William. There was only a lost and lonely creature, walking slowly over the abandoned edges of the world.

Then he thought about Daerk and Michael. It gave him hope. He knew what must be done. "I'm ready," he said, his voice shaking as he got to his feet. "I understand."

The woman turned to face him. She reached into a pocket and pulled out a long, golden sword. "At this point we can't save the pieces. You have always been two people, so we must separate them to set things right." She hefted the sword at her side, testing its weight. "There is no way to prepare yourself."

Deftly she swung the gleaming sword high. It hung there for a moment, catching the brilliant light, then she brought it down onto his head. It met a great resistance, then it fell swiftly through the midline of his body, a single look of horror uniting the face. For a moment, each half stayed standing, and then they fell away from each other, all the threads of the universe unraveling between them.