Light in Dark Places

Chapter Fifty

Later, Joan will think about how passing through the dome was a lot like jumping off the cliff into the lake. She was terrified the entire time and she was also abruptly surrounded by dark and cold.

But immediately all she can think is how this isn't like anything she's ever experienced, how it's not like anything anyone has ever experienced, or ever could. She enters a place that time does not touch, where the rules of the earth do not apply. She walks like it is a dream; and that's what it feels like, some sort of dream; the kind where you know you're dreaming but it feels real anyway, the kind of altered state where the absurd makes perfect sense.

I could fly now, Joan thinks, for no reason. I could do anything I want.

There is no ground to walk on.

There is nothing.

They're not even really here.

*

Benedict thinks; I didn't need to take off my eye patch for this, it's not really all that dark. In this place, things make so much sense, and he feels a curious calm. The kind of calm he's never felt in his life about anything.

I wonder if this is what confident people feel like all the time, he thinks.

There should be a light. He thinks that too. There should be a light.

So there is a light.

*

When Benedict lets go of her hand, Joan feels the absence more keenly than she has ever felt anything. She is bereft—thrown out into the darkness.

Don't leave me!—she screams, but no words come out. This is not the kind of place where language exists.

Benedict is gone, and Joan can't see. She is completely surrounded by darkness and for a moment that feels like eternity. Joan's brain processes nothing but fear and blindness.

Breathe, she tells herself, remember to breathe. And she doesn't know what's out there but she steps forward and slowly, slowly she gropes around in the dark, and keeps moving.

You're fine, she tells herself. You were miserable for seven years and then you woke up and you're fine. This is nothing compared to that.

Even though her heart is still pounding, she starts to believe in what she is doing. This has to work. It has to. I wouldn't have woken up for no reason. This has to be the reason. It's going to work because I refuse to believe any other option is possible.

The more she tells herself that, the more she starts to feel—not brave, exactly. She definitely doesn't feel brave in this context—but at least reassured. It's going to be fine.

It is still very dark, but it's like her eyes have adjusted. This place—so much larger on the inside than it could ever appear—has the logic of a dream. Joan shouldn't have anything to walk on, and yet she does. She shouldn't be able to move, and yet she is. Things are a lot more manageable once she accepts that reality has no bearing here.

The sight of the god makes her stop and question everything she knew.

*

The place is bright and Benedict feels light and for the first time in his life it doesn't hurt to be alive. He moves with incredible urgency because the echoes around him radiate joy like the humans from a church choir his mother used to take him to as a child.

It is this, oh it is this that I have suffered for, this is why, all so it can lead to here.

That's what the echoes say and Benedict keeps moving, close to flight.