The Storm of Echoes

by Christelle Dabos

  She suddenly thinks of that unknown land where the airship came down, of that village with no writing, of those mute country folk, cut off from all civilization for centuries, until they had forgotten the very concept of language. They come from the old world. They are the old world. And if some arks are inverting today, it’s because that old world is now reinverting itself.

  Ophelia contemplates her hands, still hanging there, shrouded in the shadow of her animism. Palm facing up, palm facing down.

  The equilibrium between the Right Side and the Wrong Side was undermined by Eulalia Gonde when she inverted half of the old world, but it’s Ophelia who gave it the coup de grace, on the night of her very first mirror passage, by helping a creature to escape from the Wrong Side without giving it a symbolically equivalent counterpart. At first, this imbalance went unnoticed. It was probably just a pebble inverting here, a blade of grass reinverting there. Today—and Ophelia changes the orientation of her hands to illustrate—it’s entire countries that are changing. More and more lands and populations will be precipitated into the Wrong Side, while others will be repatriated to the Right Side, all at the whim of a dysfunctional pair of scales, their weighing mechanism getting increasingly fast, and increasingly random. A chain reaction that will end up breaking the scales themselves, and with them, all that exists.

  Ophelia no longer has either the time or the choice. She must get back to the other side, and get back there right now, alone, even if it means coming back later to look for Thorn. If she doesn’t do so, he will be lost in any case, wherever he might be. They will all be lost.

  But how? What use is her finally knowing everything if she can’t change anything?

  She looks up from her hands, silently to question Ambrose 1, who replies by indicating no. He has never had any intention for her to leave the Wrong Side, because he can’t himself. Instead, he points to her echo, which has picked up an old comb from a shelf.

  Ophelia doesn’t understand.

  Ambrose 1 mimes, once again, a reconciliatory handshake. The next moment, with a parting smile, he has disappeared. He left as he had arrived. Perhaps he has rejoined Lazarus in aerargyrum limbo.

  Ophelia turns to her echo, which is attempting, without much success, to drag the comb through its tangled curls. Would it, then, be her key to getting out? Ambrose 1 is right. There’s a dispute between them that hasn’t been resolved, and she now remembers what it’s about. That marble flagstone with which the echo had threatened her is the one Ophelia had almost used against it, when it was still but a voice inside a mechanical parrot.

  No doubt the echo senses her focusing on it, as it puts the comb down and, with chin raised, defies her to come closer. It’s chewing faster.

  If Ophelia were to make a step toward it, it would just move back a step. So she doesn’t move. She looks squarely at it, straight in the glasses, across the length of parquet flooring between them. Their standoff lasts an eternity but, as much as she’s in a hurry, Ophelia won’t break it. The more she sees of this double of herself, so familiar and so unknown, the more she fears what they really are to each other. Two separate entities that originally formed just one.

  Her echo is the mirror visitor that she has ceased to be.

  “Who is I.”

  Ophelia has no idea how it manages to speak, when all she can produce is inarticulate sounds. Maybe it’s because it was born of a question to which it awaits the answer. Fine. With slow gestures, Ophelia indicates them both, first it, then herself.

  You is I.

  The echo considers her as it chews.

  Ophelia does the same gesture in reverse. First herself, then it.

  I is you.

  Barely has she given her response than the echo finally starts moving toward her, with a contorted gait that is less noticeable when it is going backwards. For the first time, it stops its chewing and sticks out its tongue, to show her, finally, what it has in its mouth: a minuscule spark of darkness.

  The Horn of Plenty.

  The echo has taken advantage of Ophelia’s entering the Wrong Side to bring the front door with it! It has stolen the Deviations Observatory’s cornerstone, the energy source that allowed Eulalia Gonde to create the family spirits, and Lazarus to create several generations of automatons. That indomitable force that had inverted so many of the sacrificed, starting with Thorn, is right there, on the tip of a tongue.

  The echo swallows the Horn of Plenty like a pill, and, without allowing Ophelia time to react, it grabs her by the scarf and plunges with her into the room’s mirror.

  The feeling is horrendous.

  It is as if Ophelia has been forced into a different skin. Her echo’s individual consciousness dissolves into her own. They form, once again, but one. She has the contradictory feeling of doubling in volume, and then of flattening, from the tip of her toes to the fringe of the scarf. Space no longer has either an in front or a behind, obliging Ophelia to just hover there. She is stuck halfway between the Wrong Side and the Right Side. The in-between. A mesh preventing each world from mixing with the other, and which Ophelia, despite her countless mirror passages, has never broken through; not on her own, at any rate. It is not within her power to create a new Horn of Plenty. How, then, is she supposed to reinvert herself? She would like to scream for help, but her throat is now thick as blotting paper. She sees nothing, hears nothing. The only thing she is conscious of is her left foot, which is hurting her terribly, as if an invisible force were trying to wrench it off her. The pain rises up her calf, and, suddenly, she understands that someone, out there, is trying to pull her out of the in-between. From a distance, hazy cries reach her. The voices of her family. She wants to be back with them, she wishes it with all her might, but something resistant stops her.

  The counterpart.

  To return to the right side of the world, Ophelia has to accept giving up a symbolically equivalent counterpart to the wrong side of the world. If she doesn’t respect this rule, all she will do is worsen the cycle of inversions and reinversions.

  It’s a deal.

  Ophelia felt ripped apart when, after a final yank, she was expelled from the in-between. She collapsed, with all her weight, into the midst of a flurry of Anima swearwords. With her glasses skew-whiff and the scarf in a panic, she opened wide her dazed eyes. She considered the face, sprinkled with freckles, of her big sister Agatha, collapsed on the floor beside her, clinging to her leg; then her mother, red-faced and wild-haired, clinging to Agatha’s waist; and then her father, clinging to her mother’s fulsome dress; and then Aunt Rosaline clinging to her father; and finally, clinging to Aunt Rosaline like the links of a lengthy chain, her brother-in-law Charles, her little sisters, Domitilla, Beatrice, and Leonora, her little brother Hector, and even, each clinging to one of Hector’s legs, her young nephews! It was the combining of all these hands that had enabled Ophelia to return to the right side of the world. There was one more hand when her great-uncle presented his to her, his moustache hoisted by a smile such as she had never seen before on his old face.

  “Old habits die hard, eh? Your specialty is still getting stuck in mirrors?”

  Ophelia blinked. She was all mixed up, dazed, shattered, and, on top of it all, completely disorientated. Her natural coloring had returned. All around her, she recognized the public restroom at the Memorial. She had left the in-between through the mirror fixed above the sink, against which she had almost knocked herself out. What she couldn’t explain to herself was what her entire family was doing in this precise place in the world. A naked baby was wailing on what seemed to be an improvised changing table.

  It took all the presence of mind left to Ophelia to grasp the hand her great-uncle was still holding out to her. To try to, at least; her gloves, strangely limp, no longer grasped anything. A silvery vapor was leaking out of them. Great-uncle’s smile collapsed under his moustache. The joyful exclamations turned into horrif
ied screams in the Memorial restroom.

  Ophelia no longer had any fingers.

  “Ah, yes,” she muttered, in a croaky voice. “The counterpart.”

  IN THE WINGS

  And there we are. He has played his part in history. Sure, it definitely wasn’t a leading role, but at least he had enabled Ophelia to understand what needed to be understood. She came out from the wings, and what awaits her onstage, even he doesn’t know this time. The end of times—of time—is approaching. Only a single advance echo remains. Ophelia, the old woman, and the monster will finally meet again. The rest is but a blank page, recto and verso, that’s about to tear. Everything and its opposite are simultaneously possible.

  Yes, entering that cage really was a most interesting experience.

  THE IMPOSTURE

  “Quick, sit her here! No, not there, here, in the reading room, on the balcony, the seats are more comfy. My dear, you’re pale as a lightbulb . . . Charles, go and get a glass of water, preferably drinking water! Right, my dear, let’s get those gloves off, maybe it’s not as ghastly as it seems . . . Trombones alive! Your hands, my dear, your poor hands! Agatha, stop whining, it won’t make her fingers grow back. Maybe . . . maybe they . . . just fell off? Domitilla, Beatrice, and Leonora, go back to the restroom and look for your sister’s fingers! Oh, my dear, do these things really only happen to you? And what have you done to your hair? I just wish I could have got there sooner, to protect you from every danger, starting with yourself. Why, oh why, did you run away from home, my dear? Not a telegram—I thought I’d die of worry!”

  Ophelia was watching her mother’s lips move. She had gone from a world without language to a torrent of words. Her mother was going from questioning her, to pitying her, to scolding her, to kissing her. Her father, more discreet but less scatterbrained, made her drink the glass of water Charles had brought, which she couldn’t hold without help. Agatha was sobbing louder than the baby’s wails—her youngest, whose nappy Charles had been busy changing when Ophelia’s foot had burst through the mirror. As for Hector, now taller than her, he was considering her very seriously from under the sandy fringe of his bowl-cut hair.

  “Why have you lost your fingers?”

  “I had no choice.”

  “Why were you in that mirror?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Why did you leave home again?”

  “I had to.”

  “Why did you never write?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  Each reply took Ophelia several swallows. She now remembered how to speak, but it didn’t come naturally, for all that. Hector wrinkled his nose, and all his freckles raced up his face in pursuit. There was resentment behind each of his “whys,” but he ended up bending his own rule by asking, in a gentler voice:

  “Does it hurt?”

  Impulsively, Ophelia squeezed her little brother’s cheeks with the two halves of her hands. She gazed at the empty space instead of fingers. The skin was all smooth, without a cut or a scar, as if she had been born like that. No, it didn’t hurt, but was that preferable? If she had endured the breaking of her bones, and tearing of her flesh, maybe she would have realized what was happening to her. Those ten little digits, which had made her the best object reader of her generation, had returned to the Wrong Side as soon as they were reincarnated. She noticed that at least her beauty spot was back where it belonged, in the hollow of her left elbow. She had been perfectly reinverted during her transition through the in-between.

  Domitilla, Leonora, and Beatrice, who had returned from the restroom empty-handed, threw themselves on her. They were too big for her shortened arms, but she hugged them tight all the same.

  Aunt Rosaline had sat down facing her. With eyes as stern as her bun, and her long teeth visible between her lips, she was sizing her up with a combination of disapproval and compassion. Her complexion was as jaundiced as ever.

  “I would even prefer the days when you used to spoil your gloves.”

  That was all, but those simple words were enough to bring Ophelia’s emotions flooding back. She was suddenly overcome with both joy and sadness, and she no longer had the fingers to brush away the tears caught in her eyelashes. The scarf took care of it for her by nudging her glasses.

  Ophelia had so many questions to ask, but she kept to the most important one for now:

  “Where are the family spirits?”

  “Here, at the Memorial, nearly all of them. Fox has gone to inform Berenilde of your arrival,” Aunt Rosaline added, after clearing her throat. “Yes, they are here, but I should warn you that you will find them changed, too. Especially our little Victoria. She is not at all well.”

  Ophelia’s great-uncle struggled to make his way through to Ophelia.

  “Give her some air, goodness’ sake! Can’t you see she needs to fix her pipes?”

  From the internal balcony she had been settled on, Ophelia could see the rings of stories winding around the atrium, and within them, a totally abnormal commotion. The Memorialists were running between the bookcases, emptying display cabinets, filling trolleys with rare books. Some were shouting that everyone must evacuate, others that they must stay. The silent sanctuary had turned into an almighty hubbub. And just to add to the confusion, the high tide had shrouded everything in a veil of clouds.

  Ophelia looked up at the globe of the Secretarium, where she had ended up shortly before, as it hovered, unperturbed, beneath the glass cupola. What she could remember of the Wrong Side was as confused as a dream, along with a feeling of not walking in her own sandals. The only thing she felt very clearly was guilt. She had returned without Thorn. She knew why she had done so, but that choice lay heavy on her stomach. No more than a few hours had passed since they had both entered that cage, but each second was widening the distance between them.

  “Where are the family spirits?” she repeated.

  As she was trying to stand up, gently moving her sisters aside and awkwardly leaning her stunted hands on the armrests, her great-uncle forced her to sit back down.

  “I didn’t want to betray you, m’dear, I swear to you. Your ma gave me the third degree, every day of every week of every month after your dramatic departure with Mr. Holey-Hat, and I never breathed a word.”

  “Well, that’s really nothing to be proud of!” her mother butted in, her face pinched. “My sister moves to the Pole, my daughter runs away to Babel, everyone leaves me with no explanation.”

  “The arks don’t revolve around you, Sophie!” Aunt Rosaline exclaimed, with exasperation.

  “And then there were the holes,” her great-uncle continued, more loudly, as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “Anima became a veritable colander! Holes smaller than those here, granted, but bloody great holes, all the same, so deep you couldn’t see the bottom, and what’s more, the Rapporteur almost fell down one in her kitchen, which wouldn’t have been such a bad thing.”

  “A hole in Uncle Hubert’s field,” said Hector.

  “A hole in Granny Antoinette’s cellar,” said Domitilla.

  “A hole in Goldsmiths’ Street,” said Leonora.

  “Plop,” Beatrice added.

  “We had some at the lace factory,” said Agatha, tapping her baby’s back. “Didn’t we, Charles? It was ab-so-lute-ly terrifying!”

  “At the Pole, too, we had landslides,” added Aunt Rosaline. “A forest of fir trees and a frozen lake disappeared, from one day to the next. I don’t know if that’s why, but Mr. Farouk suddenly decided to leave the Pole for Babel. He wanted no escort, no minister, no aide-memoire. Just Berenilde, and although he didn’t mention it specifically, his daughter. They’re all more unreasonable than barometers,” she sighed, between her teeth. “A journey like that in times like these . . . But anyway, it’s not as if there’s just one place to shelter in.”

  “Are we going to die?” asked Agatha’s eldest son.
>
  The great-uncle swore into his moustache to shut them all up, and, looking serious, returned to Ophelia.

  “Artemis also lost the plot. She summoned all the Doyennes here, in the middle of the night, to entrust Anima to them, and got a bee in her bonnet that she had to go to Babel’s Memorial. Right where you were supposed to be doing your little inquiry. I realized this was tricky for you, or would be. I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer. I told you mother where you were. Like a shot, we all packed our bags and invited ourselves onboard Artemis’s airship. A tub she animated herself, m’dear, and so fast I almost swallowed my dentures! When we arrived at the Memorial, in Babel, we saw that you clearly weren’t there, but we decided to stick around all the same. And lucky we did, hey?”

  Breathless from having talked too much, her great-uncle looked deep into Ophelia’s eyes, careful to avoid looking at her fingerless hands; hands that he had personally trained, and that would never read objects again.

  She smiled, at him, and at all of her family. Her echo’s final act, before dissolving inside her, had been to bring her back to her loved ones. Without them, she would have remained stuck inside the mirror, for good this time.

  “Thank you. For being here. For being safe and sound.”

  They all exchanged glances, almost embarrassed by this declaration, as if they no longer really knew what to add, after that.

  “Where are the family spirits?” Ophelia then asked again, resolutely getting to her feet. “I must see them.”

  It was right then that Berenilde made her appearance in the reading room. Ophelia had seen her drink, smoke, succumb to every excess, without ever losing her splendor. Now she was barely recognizable. Her hair, of which she had always taken the greatest care, whatever the circumstances, fell on her thinner shoulders like grey rain. She was pushing a baby carriage in which there lay a pale little body, still and silent. With her hands gripping the handle, she seemed unable to keep upright without it. As soon as she let go of it, Aunt Rosaline rushed over to offer her arm, but Berenilde refused it with a friendly gesture, and, despite the emaciation stretching her skin over her bones, stood rigidly upright. Her eyes widened, nearly drowning her face, as she surveyed all the Animists, adults and children, present in the room, before they stopped at Ophelia.