“We love you,” Miho said.
“We forgive you,” Adam said.
A harsh wind kicked up and blew the front door open, and a bitter cold raced in around us.
We forgive you. Those words soaked into me like sunshine. We forgive you. Had those words ever been uttered in this place, in this mountain? I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t want to believe it could be true, but I was too weak to run away from it. I wondered if that was the only gift this place could offer—a weakness so intense that you simply could not do anything on your own. You could not flee when penance was paid on your behalf.
“Did you see Sarah or Karon?”
“Who?” Adam asked.
“They lived here before. This is their house.”
Miho shook her head. “We haven’t seen anyone.”
WE WAITED IN that house for a long time, trying to recover enough strength to go on. Days. Maybe weeks, I don’t know. We used Sarah and Karon’s meager stores of food and water. Inside the mountain, it was often hard to tell if night had come or if clouds had simply shadowed the canyon, choking out the light. At other times, night seemed to stretch on endlessly, and the three of us would sit at the kitchen table, quiet, staring intently at the dark windows, feeling a nameless fear.
Sometimes, when the light came around, we sat on the front porch. I always stared in the direction of the Acheron, silently pleading for Lucia to come across. I hadn’t gone down to the riverbank, so I assumed the boat was still on the near side, which meant she had little chance of coming across. Still, I wished I would see her small form coming through the trees.
While we sat on the porch one afternoon and the light faded and the ominous shadows of the trees gave way to a broader darkness, Miho looked over at me. She was sitting on the other chair. Adam stood at the corner of the house, leaning against the wood siding. I thought I could sense something between them, something new and growing, a green sprout pushing up from under a small stone. It made me feel unsettled, and happy, and jealous, and sad.
“I think we’re ready to leave,” she said, and she did pretty well at keeping any semblance of a question from her voice. But it was still there. I knew it. They wondered if I felt ready.
I nodded slowly, cleared my throat, decided not to say anything.
“So, in the morning?” Adam asked, and there was a childlike eagerness under the surface of his voice. I could understand that. He had been here in the mountain for a long, long time. I couldn’t wait for him to see the land opening up in front of us, the plains stretching out as far as he could see, the green space alive and warm and calm.
“It’s colder,” I said, hugging my arms to my chest.
“That’s another reason we should go,” Miho said.
“And Lucia?” I asked, barely able to say her name.
“We’ll talk to Abe,” Miho said in a determined voice, as if she had already argued this point many times with Adam. “Abe will know what to do.”
I sighed, a kind of quiet acquiescence. I was ready. Truth is, I had been ready for some time, but I found it hard to leave Lucia behind. I thought for a second of going back, of boarding the boat and crossing the Acheron again, making my way down the path, down the narrow ledge through the clouds, to the bog, across, through the canyon, through the gate, to the frozen lake. But I didn’t even know if she’d be there, if she had somehow managed to survive. The thought of the journey, or perhaps the memory of her—I couldn’t tell which—brought tears to my eyes. And I couldn’t have done it anyway. I was too weak.
I stood and limped back into the house, into the bedroom, and crawled under the covers. They had seemed much too thin recently, the cold reaching under them. The cold was growing. It felt like it was spilling up and out of the abyss.
When I woke up and walked into the kitchen, the small bucket of water we had kept in the corner was frozen. Miho and Adam stood on the front porch, clapping their hands together and blowing into them for warmth. We were clothed in leftover garments we had found in the house, Karon and Sarah’s final gifts to us. We looked at each other and no one said a word, but Miho led the way off the porch, into the trees, and toward the narrow canyon that led to the village and the plains.
As we walked, it started to snow.
28 The Crossing
I WISH I could tell you about the look on Adam’s face when we walked through that canyon and came out into the great wide open, how awestruck and happy he was, how he fell to the ground weeping and smelling the grass, feeling the sunshine. I wish I could tell you how he hugged Miho and me, how he started healing immediately, and how we sat out back just like the old days and looked out over the plains.
I wish.
Truth is, when we got to the opening that led into the plains, right beside the wooden signpost, I wasn’t even looking at Adam. I was looking out into that wide-open space, and I felt nothing apart from shock, confusion, and sadness.
Because there was nothing to see except snow.
But it was beautiful. Yes. The landscape was pristine, the snowflakes fell heavy and thick, and before we knew it, our hair and shoulders had a fine layer of white gracing them. Glaring white for as far as we could see, completely covering the tall green grass.
“Is this it?” Adam asked.
Miho and I didn’t say a word. The village itself didn’t look any more welcoming. Most of it was blackened, charred from the fire, and the snow only served as a greater contrast against that burned wreckage.
“What happened?” Miho whispered as I walked out in front of them. Somehow the snow had been light in the canyon, but once I stepped out into the greenway, it was ankle deep at its most shallow points. Some of the drifts reached my knees. I pushed through it, the cold wetness soaking into my pants, leaking down inside the shoes I had taken from Karon’s room. It had drifted up against my door, and when I opened it, some fell inside the house and began melting on the wooden floor.
That reminded me of when Kathy had first arrived, how she had let in the rain, collapsed inside the door, and lay there in the puddle.
Miho and Adam came in behind me, and after I pushed the door closed, everything went silent. The three of us stood there without moving, looking around. The white snow glared its light in through the back doors, but the rest of the house was dim and gray. I held my breath, waiting for Kathy to emerge from the bedroom, but after waiting a few moments and realizing everything was deathly still, it was clear no one had been in the house for a long time.
“Is this it?” Adam asked again. “Is this the village where you live?”
“It’s not usually like this,” I said.
“It’s never snowed before,” Miho said, as if explaining away some small defect.
“It’s never been this cold before,” I added.
We searched the house for anything we could burn, and soon a blaze glowed in the fireplace, crackling legs of wooden chairs and smoldering pieces of the oak bed frame and hissing smoke from the spines and pages of books. That hurt me the most, nearly caused a physical pain—when Miho pulled the books from the shelves and tossed them into the fire, splayed open, pages moving. But we were cold and tired, and long after the other two had fallen asleep on blankets on the floor in front of the fire, I watched the paper blacken and curl. I stabbed at the books, pried them open with the metal poker, so that the pages would burn completely. Even then, I could see that some of the words would survive.
Long after dark, I heard a knock on the door. At first I wondered if Adam or Miho had gone outside. But they were sleeping, and neither moved at the knock. Was it Abe? Or one of the others, come back to have their revenge on Adam? I walked to the door and stood there for a full ten seconds before reaching down and taking the knob, turning it, opening the door.
Kathy.
We stared at each other as she stood in the snowdrift, light from the dying fire flickering on her face, her back to the mountain and the nighttime shadows. I felt gaunt and stretched, filthy, worn down. I felt li
ke she must have felt when I had first seen her.
“Hi,” I said in a tired voice. My knees were suddenly weak.
“Dan,” she said, compassion in her voice. She looked like she might cry. “You’re back.”
She filled me with competing desires. I wanted to slam the door in her face. I wanted to embrace her. I wanted to care for her. I wanted her to care for me.
“What happened?” I asked. I couldn’t help it—accusation slipped into my voice.
Her dark eyes hardened like water freezing in fast motion. “Whatever do you mean?” she asked, her voice barely louder than the wind that swept the snow into the house. I could hear it, the icy rasping of the snow scraping along the floor. The cold breeze rustled the fire, fanning it.
“All of this happened after you arrived,” I said, but the accusation had taken a backseat to genuine confusion. “The fire. Me going into the mountain. The chaos.” I paused. “The snow. Everything fell apart.”
She gave a mocking grin. “You think I caused the snow?” Her voice was the one used to speak to older children about nighttime monsters and fantastical creatures.
I stared at her. Yes, actually, I did. I did think she had brought the snow. “You started the fire. I know that.”
Her mouth hardened. She blinked once. Twice. Her piercing eyes took me in, devoured me. “I know what you did,” she said. “I know who you left behind.”
My face flushed with shame.
“You should rest here, recover your strength, and go back in. Find her.” Her voice was very convincing.
“I can’t,” I said.
“You left a small girl in the abyss. Think about it. What chance does she have?” She turned and walked through the snow as if it was warm water, as if her body was nothing more than a mechanical shell made to transport her mind through any condition. I walked out into the snow and watched as she vanished into the darkness, down the hill, in among the burned buildings.
A voice called to me from the house. I turned in a daze.
“Dan!” the voice shouted again. “What are you doing?”
I walked slowly back through the snow, feeling as helpless as I ever had. At the end of me. We could not stay here, that was clear. I did not have the strength to go back and retrieve Lucia. But without her, I didn’t think I could go east.
I came to the door of my house and walked past Miho, her confused, beautiful face. She leaned aside to make room for me to go through. “Dan, what were you doing out there?”
I sat down in front of the dying fire. I threw in another book. And another. And another. “I thought I heard someone,” I said.
IN THE MORNING, we stood by the back doors and took in the plains. Because the sky was a glaring white, it was almost impossible to distinguish the horizon. The entire world was a white space, empty and never-ending. The first tree outside of town, off in the distance, was black against the white backdrop.
“We have to go east,” Miho said, and neither of us replied. We stared out at the snow.
In the stillness, I heard the sounds of someone approaching the front door through the snow, pounding their hands together, kicking through the drifts. I didn’t think I had the mental fortitude to argue with Kathy one more time. If she insisted I go back, I would. I would take a flask of water and whatever food I could find in the burned houses, and I would return. I knew I would die there, either drowning in the river or falling from the ledge or starving. But if it was her, I knew I would go back.
Adam and Miho looked at me as the sound of knocking echoed in the quiet house. I wondered why one of them didn’t go answer the door, but I was also afraid of what Kathy might do to them, what she might say to them, so I took on the mantle of their expectations and crossed the room. It was my house, after all.
I opened the door.
It was Abe. His arms opened wide, and I fell into them, weeping.
ABE SAT IN the armchair. Miho sat on the floor beside him, closer to the fireplace. Every so often, she leaned over and plucked a book from the shelf and threw it in. It hurt a little, how easily she did this.
Adam sat across from them, his back to the fire, facing the back doors, staring out over the plains as if it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Even when he spoke, he barely shifted his body.
And I sat wrapped in a blanket, my back against the wall across from the fireplace. My gaze went from Abe to Miho to Adam to the fire and back again to Abe. He was the only one who made eye contact with me. When Miho’s gaze met mine, it flitted away like a doe into the undergrowth. Adam refused to look at me. They had forgiven me in the canyon, but here, where our trip east became real, where we would turn our backs on the mountain and Lucia for the final time, the reality of what I had done was hard to forget.
When Abe first arrived, we’d greeted him and said a few pleasantries. We’d settled into our current spots. And then we’d said nothing. Where were we supposed to begin?
“How did we end up here, Abe?” I asked quietly.
“Here?” he asked.
“This place. The mountain. This village. What is this? How is it connected to the memories of these lives we lived so long ago?”
His face was almost expressionless. “I think you already know.”
“Maybe, but I want to hear it from you.”
He seemed to be considering his options, and he started nodding before he even spoke. “Yes, you know. I think you all do, if you’re honest with yourselves.”
Miho held her hand up over her face, tears rising to her eyes.
“The memories you have,” Abe said in a kind, hesitant voice, “are from a life you lived before you died.”
“So this . . .” Adam began, his voice trailing off.
“This is all in a time and place after life,” Abe said.
“We’re dead?” Miho’s words came out with a kind of dread. But Abe’s smile warmed us.
“Do you feel dead?” he asked.
Miho shook her head.
“That’s because you died, but you’re not dead. You’re here. You came through the mountain. You lived in this town for a long, long time. And now you have to decide what to do next.”
I knew that Abe was talking to all of us. I had died. This was not a surprise to me. In some ways, him saying that out loud felt like the final piece in a puzzle that I had been able to see for quite some time. But even though Abe wasn’t delivering a revelation, we still sat there in silence for a long time, trying to connect everything.
Finally, Miho broke the silence. “What now, Abe?” She sounded like a lost child.
“There’s not much food,” Abe cautioned. “The others took most of what they could find with them for the journey. I hope they made it out in front of this snow.” His voice faded, and I imagined our friends forging through knee-high drifts, collapsing in the cold. How could Miss B ever make it through this?
“So, we can’t stay,” Miho said in a matter-of-fact voice.
“Why would anyone stay here?” Adam asked.
“You should have seen it.” My voice erupted almost without my permission. “You should have seen this place when times were good.” I stared into the fire. “I could hear the laughter from up here. Everyone down in the village on a cool night, the fire roaring. Sometimes there was singing.” I looked over at Adam. “Sometimes there was singing,” I said, as if that alone would be enough. My voice sank down into a whisper. “You might as well know it all now. There’s no reason to keep it from you. You already know I left Lucia behind, not that I could have done anything, but I lied to you about it and I accept responsibility. But there are other things too.”
I felt Miho stare at me in that moment, and it felt like everyone was holding their breath.
“I knew Kathy was here. I welcomed her into my house when she came from the other side.” I waited for admonishment, yet there was nothing but kindness in Abe’s eyes. “I don’t know why I didn’t tell you all about her. I thought I was doing something good. At least in the
beginning.”
This time Miho didn’t look away.
“She kissed me.” I shook my head. There were so many things I wanted to say, and all the words were getting clogged up in a drain too narrow to accommodate the flow. “But that’s not even the worst of it.” I laughed, as if the extent of my false life was ludicrous. And it was. It suddenly seemed almost comical to me. “The worst is that the plane crash wasn’t even Adam’s fault.”
Now they all looked surprised. Even Abe.
“It’s true!” My voice started sounding maniacal, even to me. “It’s true. Adam wasn’t fit to fly that plane. He was drunk. Do you remember that, Adam? You were a raging alcoholic.”
He nodded. “Yeah,” he said, but he didn’t seem ashamed. That made me even more jealous, and I felt like I was losing myself, like my sanity was tethered to me by a thin string and the tension was building, and if the string snapped, all would be lost. “I do remember that,” he said.
“Well, I found you that morning, and I forced you to fly. I laid it on thick—we’d go under, we’d be broke, you had to do it. And so you did. If I hadn’t walked you to that plane, you never would have flown, and no one would have died.”
I looked between the three of them, my heart racing, my eyes bulging. I stared at everyone again. “So. That’s it. Everything—Lucia, Kathy, the crash. It’s all my fault.”
We sat there in the silence that rushed in after my outburst. The fire died down, and I willed Miho not to throw any more books in it, and for some reason she didn’t. She was staring into the glowing embers, somewhere far away. Adam had stood and walked over to the doors, standing so close to them I thought he was going to pull them open and go blundering into the snow. Only Abe returned my gaze. He said something under his breath, to me or to himself, I couldn’t tell. But the shape of his words seemed to say, “Well done.”
He sighed. “All of this is in the past. I’m glad you’ve said what you’ve said, Dan. There is nowhere to go now but forward. In this moment.” He waited to see if Miho or Adam would say anything. When they didn’t, he continued. “It seems to me,” he said in a humble voice, as if he was completely open to disagreement, “that the most important question is the one Miho asked a moment ago. Namely, what now?”
These Nameless Things Page 23
