Memory and Dream n-5

by Charles de Lint

  “Why didn’t you kill Rushkin?” Cosette asked as she moved into position.

  Alan gave her an anguished look. “I never got the chance.”

  Davis filed that information away for the time being. There was a hell of a lot more going on here than met the eye, but he’d have to sort it all out later. Right now they had a life to save. Normally he would have left Isabelle lying as she was until the medics could get here, but Christ knew how long it’d take an ambulance to get through the Tombs to reach this place. As it was, the woman looked so weak he wasn’t sure she’d make it through the next few minutes, never mind a ride to the nearest hospital.

  “One, two, three,” Davis said.

  He’d been expecting a dead weight, but the woman didn’t seem to weigh more than a few ounces, tops. She was in seriously bad shape. Marisa had replaced the soaked rag bandages with his shirt and had held it in position while they moved the woman. It was already turning crimson. Not a good sign.

  “She got cut on the side of the throat,” Marisa explained. “I don’t think any of the major veins were cut.”

  “When did she pass out?”

  “She hit her head on the wall as she was falling down.”

  Great, Davis thought. So they had a concussion to worry about as well. “Okay, let’s get her out of here,” he said. “Rolanda, you and the kid take point.”

  Rolanda gave him a confused look.

  “Take the lead,” Davis explained. “Scout ahead. You hear anything, you come tell us. Don’t play hero.”

  This time she didn’t argue. She gave a quick nod and went to the door, waiting there for Cosette.

  Cosette stared down at Isabelle’s ashen features, her own face having gone almost as pale. She reached out a hand and lightly brushed a wan cheek with the tops of her fingers.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean those things I said about you.”

  “Cosette,” Rolanda called.

  Cosette nodded, but didn’t look away from Isabelle. “I know you loved us,” she said, “but it just didn’t seem to be enough.”

  Then she turned away and hurried out of the room after Rolanda.

  There was something seriously weird about that kid, Davis thought as he watched her go. He found a grip for each hand on the sides of his end of the cot.

  “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” he told Alan as they lifted the cot between them.

  “I’ll tell you whatever you want,” Alan said. “But not until we get Isabelle to a hospital.”

  “Understood.”

  Davis took the lead, walking carefully backward through the rubble. Marisa walked alongside the cot, keeping the makeshift bandages in place. None of them spoke again as they navigated their way down the stairs and out of the building, where the night was suddenly filled with sirens and flashing lights.

  XXI

  Isabelle didn’t feel any pain. She knew Rushkin had hit her with his second shot—how could he have missed at such close range? But then she’d closed the distance between them and there was no more time to think. She barreled straight into him, hands scrabbling for his gun, knocking him backward, off balance. Because of the force of her momentum, she lost her own footing and fell down on top of him.

  They hit the floor with a thump that had to have knocked the breath out of him, but she didn’t let up.

  This time she was determined to see things through. If she had to die, she’d be damned if she’d let him survive to torment someone else the way he’d tormented her.

  He didn’t fight back as she struggled to get a grip on the gun in his hand. His fingers had gone oddly limp and she had no trouble pulling the weapon free from his loose clasp. Clutching the revolver, she scuttled sideways, trying to put some distance between them before she aimed the revolver back in his direction. But there was no need to fire. No need to see if she could actually go through with it and pull the trigger.

  Rushkin lay sprawled on the floor where she’d knocked him, except she hadn’t been responsible for the blood that was splattered all over the floor and on the wall behind him. She stared at his corpse and it was only then that she understood why he hadn’t fought back. The second shot hadn’t been from his gun, but from John’s.

  Her hands began to shake and she slowly laid Rushkin’s weapon on the floor. She wrapped her arms around her upper torso, but the trembling grew worse. She watched John enter her field of vision. He walked slowly up to Rushkin, his gun pointed at the monster’s chest as he toed the body. Once. Twice.

  There was no response. When he was finally satisfied that Rushkin was dead, John put down his own weapon and walked back to where Isabelle knelt, shivering.

  “It’s okay,” he said. He crouched beside her. Putting an arm around her shoulders, he drew her close. “It’s over now.”

  Isabelle nodded. But it didn’t feel as though it was over. It felt more like it was just beginning. She felt stretched so thin that she knew something had to give. Still leaning against John, she looked back at the body.

  “There’s ... blood,” she said. She regarded John in confusion. “But numena can’t bleed.”

  “That we know,” he replied. “Remember what he said: all we know is what he’s told us. He might have taken over more than Rushkin’s life. He might have taken over his body as well.”

  “Unless he was lying.”

  John nodded. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know the truth about some things, but it doesn’t matter.

  Whatever he was, he’s dead now and we don’t ever have to worry about him anymore.”

  Dead, Isabelle thought, and then she understood why she was feeling stretched so thin. Back there, in that tenement studio of Rushkin’s, the last of her life was finally bleeding out of her body.

  “I think I’m dying, too,” she said. “I can feel the pull of my body fading away on me.”

  “Hold on,” John told her, his voice suddenly urgent. “Don’t let go.”

  “I don’t think I have much say in it at this point.”

  And at least she wasn’t dying alone, she thought. Not like Kathy had died. Had Kathy regretted what she’d done when it was too late? Had she wanted someone to be with her as desperately as Isabelle knew she would if she didn’t have John?

  “I wish I could have been there for Kathy,” she said. “I wish I hadn’t let her die alone.”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “But I should have figured it out. If I’d been a better friend ...”

  “No,” John said. “That’s not the way it was at all.”

  “But it is. You always told me to be more responsible.”

  “I told you to be responsible for what you do—for your own actions. There’s a difference.”

  “I still wish I’d come in time to stop her,” Isabelle said.

  “Of course you do. That’s natural. But you can’t take responsibility for what she did. It’s not like she came to you and asked you for help and you turned her down.”

  “But in a way I did. I wasn’t there for her anymore. Not enough. Not like I should have been. She loved me—unconditionally and right from the first. How could I have gone away and left her alone in the city?”

  John could only shake his head. “You can’t live other people’s lives for them.”

  “But—”

  “And you can’t second-guess what they want,” John went on. “All you can do is accept the parts of themselves that they show you. We don’t live inside each other’s heads or have a script where everything we’re supposed to do is all worked out for us. If Kathy had wanted more from you, she would have told you.”

  But she did, Isabelle thought. The only trouble was she’d either hidden her message away in her stories or written it in a journal that she’d only been willing to share after she’d died.

  Isabelle wasn’t even leaving behind that much. She was beginning to feel thinner than ever. Almost transparent. She slid out of John’s arms and laid her head on his lap, looking up at h
im, too weak to do anything else.

  “Hang on,” John said. “Think of yourself as having been healed, of going on from here. Don’t let go.”

  Isabelle nodded, but it was so hard. “If I had another chance—not to change the past, but to go on, I’d do things differently. I wouldn’t just hide away on the island anymore. I think I’d take up Kathy’s work. I’d keep the island for any of the numena who wanted to live there, and I’d still live there some of the year, but I wouldn’t hide away from the world anymore. And I’d try to be there for my friends.”

  She paused as a deep sorrow rose up inside her. It grew not for herself; but for all the time she’d wasted.

  “Because if I died now,” she said, “not many people’d miss me. I’m just not a part of their lives anymore. When Tom Downs died a couple of years ago, I remember going to his funeral and seeing all those people there and thinking if it was me they were burying, I could count the mourners on one hand.”

  She looked up into John’s eyes. “I’m not just feeling sorry for myself. It’s more like pity. That I could have let my life come to this.”

  “I’d miss you.”

  Isabelle gave him a sad smile. “Even with all those lost years between us?” John nodded.

  “Did you ... were you and Barbara lovers?” she asked.

  “No. We were only friends. Good friends.”

  “I wish we could have stayed friends,” Isabelle said.

  She closed her eyes. She heard John say something, but she couldn’t make out what it had been, because she was stretched so thin now that she was invisible.

  I hope you waited for me, Kathy, she had time to think.

  And then she went away.

  XXII

  Left behind in Rushkin’s studio, John bowed his head. The hands that had been stroking Isabelle’s hair lay on his knees. The weight of Isabelle’s head was gone from his lap. He was alone now in the studio, except for the two bodies. Isabelle had been drawn back into the world, out of dreamtime. He could feel the pull of the world on himself as well, but he held on to her dreamtime for a few moments longer. Nothing waited for him there in the world.

  He regarded the corpse nailed to the wall, then let his gaze travel to the other Rushkin, the one he’d killed. Which had he been—numena or maker? In the end, John realized he’d told Isabelle the truth: it didn’t matter. All that was important was that the monster was dead.

  There were so many dead. Rushkin murdering Isabelle’s numena. He, Rushkin’s. How had it come to be that he’d embarked upon such a course for his life? He sighed. Why did he even ask?

  It began with Isabelle’s friend, Rochelle. He’d tracked down and confronted her attackers, wanting to know why they had done such a thing. They’d only laughed at him. And then one of them had said,

  “You should’ve stayed on the reservation and minded your own business, Geronimo, because now we’re going to have to shut your mouth for you.”

  They hadn’t known what he was. They’d been no match for him. He hadn’t meant to kill them, but once they were dead, he’d rationalized that their deaths had served to even the scales of justice.

  That was where it had begun. He’d vowed to take no more human lives, to devote himself instead to protecting Isabelle’s numena. But on the night of his greatest failure, as the farmhouse burned and all those innocent spirits died, he took the battle to Rushkin, tracking down his creatures and dispatching them until the monster fled the country. That should have been it. That should have ended it. Except Rushkin had returned with the last of his creatures and the killing began again.

  “Has it ended now?” he asked Rushkin’s corpse.

  The monster was dead. Whatever had animated it, numena or maker, was gone. But the fixed stare of that dead gaze seemed to be focused directly upon him, mocking him. You win, it said to him, by which it meant he’d lost everything all over again.

  John closed his eyes, calling up Isabelle’s features, needing them to wash away the choking swell of his memories, of too many murders, of the dead monster that shared the studio with him. In his mind, he repeated what he’d said to Isabelle, what she hadn’t heard.

  We were always friends, Izzy. Nobody could take that from me—not even you.

  But the lies he’d told her still lay between them, for when truth was the only coin one had, even one lie rendered all one’s coins suspect. He was guilty of far more than one. Whenever Isabelle had pressed him too hard, when changing the subject no longer worked, the lies had come. No, he hadn’t killed Rochelle’s attackers. He lived with an aunt in Newford. She didn’t care for white girls. Her apartment looked like this. One led so easily into the next.

  If he’d been asked what he regretted the most, it would be the lies. The lies, and the pride that had kept him away from her when he knew she needed him, when he could have been with her and prevented the deaths of so many. For if he’d been there with her on the night of the fire ...

  He remembered what the monster had said just before he died: Everything has its price.

  He’d finally fulfilled the promise he’d made all those years ago when the farmhouse on Wren Island burned down and the inferno claimed so many of his brothers and sisters. He’d finally put an end to the threat Rushkin presented. But in the process, he’d lost Isabelle once again.

  He opened his eyes and regarded Rushkin’s corpse.

  “You’re right,” he told it, his voice bitter. “I win.”

  Rushkin was dead. Isabelle’s numena were safe. But his share of the victory was only the memories made of ashes and dust that would be his companions once more.

  He let the dreamtime fade and returned to the lonely world into which Isabelle had called him all those years ago.

  Two Hearts as One, Forever Dancing

  Two figures, holding hands, dominate the field.

  The young woman on the right has a bird’s-nest mane of red-gold hair cascading past her shoulders. Her solemn grey gaze is on her companion, her head tilted slightly, her smile accentuated by the thickness of her lower lip. Her nose seems a touch large for her features, ears standing out a little too far, but the overall impression one receives is of a luminous beauty. She has a rainbow array of Indian printpatches on her jeans and is wearing a tie-dyed top under a jacket adorned with a ragtag assortment of scarves. In her free hand she is holding a small hardcover book out of which sticks a fountain pen, as though to mark her place.

  The young woman on the left is smaller, almost a shadow of the other with her dark hair and bohemian blacks—T-shirt, jeans, sweater and scarf. She is smiling as well, but her dark eyes look out of the painting, directly engaging the viewer. She has a paintbrush tucked away behind one small, neat ear and in her free hand she holds a watercolor paint box and a spiral-bound sketchbook, the pages of which are wavy and swollen from many dried washes.

  They are standing on a headland overlooking a lake, the meadows around them running riot with sweeps of goldenrod and wild asters. The landscape on a whole has been only vaguely detailed. It has a soft, hazy, almost sfumato quality about it, lending a dreaminess to the setting that should logically be at odds with the sharply focused rendering of the two figures. But such is not the case. By virtue of her use of broken color throughout, combined with a light feathering technique that is particularly effective in the two figures, the artist has integrated figures and background to a remarkable degree.

  There is something at once innocent and sensual in how the two young women are standing, joined together by the clasp of their hands. One senses a great affection between the two. A study of photographs taken when the artist was in her twenties reveals that she has used herself and longtime friend, the late author Katharine Mully, as models for this piece. Considering the recent publication by the East Street Press of an omnibus of Mully’s stories illustrated by the artist, the significance of their joined clasp and what each holds in her free hand seems most apropos.

  Two Hearts as One, Forever Dancing, 1993, oil on c
anvas, 40 X 30 inches. Collection of the artist.

  Open House

  Painting is limitless in that you can do what you like. People make rules like they

  make rules about God, but there are no rules. You can be as brave as you want to,

  or limit yourself as much as you want to.

  —Jean Cooke, from an interview in The Artist’s and Illustrator’s Magazine, April 1993

  I

  Newford, September 1993

  The East Street Press launched its illustrated edition of Touch and Go: The Collected Stories of Katharine Mully at the opening of the Katharine Mully Memorial Arts Court. The collection took its title from one of the stories original to the omnibus, a dialogue between a street performance artist and her muse centering around the argument that the only lasting venues for any form of art are dream and memory; inspiration leaps from the former to eventually be stored in the latter.

  “Everything in between is a journey,” her muse tells her. “A journey that can be documented and even held for a time, but never truly owned. Truth lies only in the vision that called up the creation and the memory of it that one takes away after it has been experienced, colored by each person’s individual life experience. No two people are the same, so no two people can remember it in the same way. Art is reborn each time a new individual experiences it.”

  “Like life,” the artist says.

  “Like life,” her muse agrees.

  The story moved Alan every time he read it, for it seemed to echo in its few short pages all the contradictions that had made up Kathy’s life. Everyone had loved her, but no one had seen her in quite the same way. And no one had seen the dark currents that underlaid her life, no one had understood that her stories were as much a cry for help for herself as they were a source of hope for so many of her readers. He hadn’t fully understood those dark currents himself until he’d read the journal.