The Glittering World

by Robert Levy

  Maureen jolted. “You were down in the . . . ?” She looked to Jason, who clenched the steering wheel and stared straight ahead, toward the road and the dark sky beyond. “The whole time?”

  “I think so. Maybe?” She laughed then, apropos of nothing. A former therapist of hers had pointed out that she often laughed when discussing difficult emotions, an unconscious derision of her pain . . . or was that something Jason had once said?

  “I really don’t know,” Elisa went on. “I don’t know why I said that. I suppose it must be true, though. Where else could I have been?” Don’t tell them anything more. Otherwise they’ll try to follow you, when it’s time to go back.

  Maureen nodded as if she understood on some deeper level. Because of Donald, perhaps. Elisa thought of last night again, the elderly man on the far side of the cabin door and the lilting ballad he had sung to her, its galloping melody. And the memories she allowed herself of being spirited through the woods. How frightening it had felt, and how right.

  “Donald,” Elisa said. “How is he?”

  “Not so hot.” Maureen whipped her head to the side as if struck. “He hasn’t been talking to me lately. Although who knows? Maybe he doesn’t have much to say.”

  Why would he speak, Elisa thought, when he can sing? The simple song about time spent below, the laughter and the light . . . Donald thought he knew what she was, what she had become. He thought she was one of them.

  “We’re off to grab a bite,” Jason said. “If Gabe ever wakes up, tell him we’ll be back soon.”

  “Oh, he’s gone out already,” Maureen said.

  “Already?” Jason sounded perturbed. “Where to?”

  “He came down the hill earlier to say hello. Turns out Donald didn’t bring Olivier back last night, so Gabe was kind enough to search for him out on the trail.”

  The dog. A flash of fur, sticky slick with sweat and oil and blood. Fevered rabid, and chasing. They scamper in a matched stride and she keeps speed, howls with laughter and communion. They are each other’s familiars, nursed from the same mother . . .

  “I hope that damn dog comes back,” Maureen was saying. “I would hate to have to bring Donald any bad news. I’m not sure he could take it.”

  “It’s interesting,” Jason said as they continued down the drive, his eyes on Maureen as she headed back to her studio. “Gabe, that is. I felt like I was really starting to get that kid. But now?” He grimaced. “Not to mention the company he’s been keeping. Very sketchy if you ask me. He’s changed a lot since you . . . disappeared.”

  “How so?” Though of course they had all changed, hadn’t they?

  “The way he talks about Blue being gone, for one. Like he’s lost a limb. And since you came back alone it’s been pure despair. It strikes me as being out of scale.” He reached for her hand and held it before returning his attention to the road. “I shouldn’t judge. I’m sure he just hasn’t been himself.”

  “Well, how do you know?” The cove unfurled before them in an aquatic panorama of shaded blues and greens, the surface of the water incandescent beneath the morning sun. “How well did we really know him before?”

  “True.” Jason thought for a moment. “And obviously he and Blue must have had something going on.”

  “Blue and Gabe are friends,” Elisa said, the word entirely banal; she could as easily have substituted her name for Gabe’s. “Maybe a bit more than that, sure.” She didn’t know what else to say.

  They pulled into the Lobster Landing, a roadside spot near the Gaelic College. The restaurant was busy for this early in the day, and they slid into the only empty booth, by the window. Elisa and Jason made small talk. About the ominous clouds in the sky, the likelihood that New York had turned beautiful in September, the steady stream of cars on the Trans-Canada Highway and how much of the traffic was still from tourists. Eventually a fiftyish bottle-blond waitress with a name tag that read Patricia, Here to Serve You appeared with two glasses of water. “Busy today,” she said, and stole a momentary glance at Elisa before she flicked Jason a pair of menus and hurried back behind the counter.

  “Friendly,” Elisa said.

  “We’ve made ourselves something of an attraction to the locals.” He handed her a menu. “It seems not all of them are admirers. To be honest, I think we were more sympathetic when you were missing. There’s been some speculation that we might have been the ones who started the fires in the woods.”

  The forest floor blackened, tree bark coiled in strips and bruised purple, like parchment held over a candle. Paper birch, gray birch, yellow birch, all of it tinder. Nothing safe aboveground, nowhere to go but to stay down, stay down, down.

  But it’s worse down here. Thick plumes of smoke, heady and overpowering. A tidal crest of choking clouds billowing through the warrens, unyielding in its rush toward the throne room . . .

  She squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them, she found Jason looking at her askance. “Sorry,” she said. “Just thinking.”

  She focused on the specials insert clipped inside the menu and tried to make herself hungry, but nothing looked very appetizing. In fact, the entire enterprise of eating was so daunting it verged on the insurmountable. “So, you were saying. About all the attention . . .”

  “That we’ve become local celebrities, yes. Or really more objects of curiosity. There’s this free press, called The Starling Cove Believer? It’s birdcage liner. Bat Boy sightings and alien abduction testimonials. Weirdo gossip and rumors.”

  “ ‘Missing Woman Returns, Hungry for Lobster Roll.’ ”

  “Something like that.” Jason grinned.

  So happy, she thought, so relieved. He made it all look so easy.

  “So,” he said, “is that what you’re in the mood for?”

  “Actually,” she replied, plunking down the menu, “I think I’ll be fine with just water.”

  “I thought you were hungry.”

  “I thought so too. Maybe I only wanted to get out. Be around people.”

  But that wasn’t right. After a cool appraisal of the room, she decided the crowd had about as much appeal as the menu. Lots of dusty plaid shirts, prairie skirts, overalls, and dull work boots . . . Nothing shined here. Least of all her.

  Come back to us.

  She looked to the window. Trees waved at her from the other side of the road, pine branches rippled like water as if combed by an unseen hand. She had to dig her nails into the corked underside of the tabletop to keep herself from rising.

  “You sure you don’t want anything?” Jason asked.

  “I’ll pick off your plate,” she said, and forced herself to smile, yet again. False, she thought. False false false. “Get whatever you want.”

  He ordered a cheeseburger and fries, and waited for the waitress to disappear again before leaning forward. “I talked to your mother this morning.”

  “She called?”

  “Actually, I called her. She wants me to check in, keep her posted on how you’re doing.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I said you were well. That you still couldn’t remember where Blue took you, or . . . You know. Whatever may have happened.”

  “Where he took me?” She made a sour face. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing.” Jason paused. “Look, I really don’t know. I just thought that . . . Well, really, it was the police that thought—they thought that maybe you two had . . .” He feigned a laugh. “They suggested that you two may have run off together.”

  “Did they.”

  He waved his hand dismissively. “Your parents, though. They really want to hear from you, Elisa.”

  “You seem to have taken care of that already. Jason.”

  “I only spoke to your mom. You haven’t actually reached out to your father, not once. He’s still really shaken up. He wants to hear from you.”

  “I didn’t realize you were acting as their go-between.”

  “They’re worried about you!” He pushed
against the table, but since it was bolted against the wall, it only caused his side of the booth to rock back. An older man behind him let out a startled yelp. “Sorry,” Jason said, and raised a conciliatory hand. All eyes were on their table, until a moment later the scrutiny of the patrons scattered, as quickly as it had amassed.

  “Stop berating me,” Elisa said. “I’m not a child.”

  “I’m trying to understand.” Jason lowered his voice as he leaned in once more. “Really I am. But you owe it to them to stay in touch. Every day. Every hour, if that’s what they want. Stay connected, for your own well-being.”

  “Is that your professional opinion?”

  He crossed his arms and turned toward the window. They sat in silence until the waitress brought his order, and Jason grabbed the burger before the plate hit the table.

  The food smelled like death. Cow’s blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth, and he gnawed away at the meat like a combine harvester, consuming everything in its path. Four minutes later the food was assimilated. Soon it would be metabolized, shit out as waste, and forgotten. It was disgusting.

  “And for the record, I’m not berating you,” Jason said after a while, as if he had continued the conversation inside his head. He spun a french fry in a puddle of bloodied ketchup. “I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve gone through.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Me neither.”

  “The important thing is that you have people who care about you, really care, no matter what.” He swallowed, palms on the table. “I don’t . . .” He took a deep breath and stared down at his plate. Was he going to cry? “I don’t have that.”

  “But you do.” She took up his hands so quickly she almost knocked over her water glass. “You do. I care about you.”

  “Do you?”

  “Of course,” she said without thinking. His hands were so much warmer than hers; it was like cupping two beating hearts in her palms.

  Jason looked up at her and his face brightened, the sadness in his eyes softening back to affection. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

  “Okay.” She cast a cursory glance inside her handbag, to make sure she wasn’t leaving anything behind. “We’ll light a fire, see if Gabe can give us some privacy. Maybe we can draw a bath . . .”

  He seemed irked. “I don’t mean back to the house. I mean home. Our home. New York.”

  It was only an act; this was all a trap. And she’d almost fallen into it.

  “Let’s go home,” he said again. “It’s time. For both of us.”

  “I told you already, I’m not going to do that.” Elisa shook her head; she could just as readily return to New York as she could travel back in time. “You know I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of . . . Blue.”

  “Blue.” Now Jason was the one shaking his head. She thought she could see him repeating Blue’s name on his lips, below his breath. “Of course.”

  “I can’t leave him out there. Don’t you get that?”

  “Actually, I don’t.” He hid his hands beneath the table. “What do you think you can do for him by staying? Gabe can stay. Maureen said she’ll put him up as long as he wants. He can move into their spare bedroom, help out with Donald. And then she can rent out the MacLeod House again. She has bills to pay, believe it or not. I know nobody is talking about that, but it’s true. Speaking of which, our rental car? We might as well have bought one for all the time we’ve been stuck here.”

  “Cars,” she said. “You’re talking about rental cars.” She couldn’t help but laugh. Rental cars. He wasn’t talking about anything real. But then again, how could he? So she went ahead and laughed. In disbelief at his nerviness, yes, but largely at the absurdity of his suggestion. She could never leave, not if Blue wasn’t found; the possibility was unthinkable.

  And it wasn’t only Blue. There was something else she had left out there, something indefinable, another part of herself that remained beneath the land. There would be no leaving, no.

  And then she laughed louder. The other patrons didn’t turn to stare this time, not even as her laughter raised to a crescendo, a wicked bellow, a witch’s cackle. The old man behind Jason laughed himself then, a little titter at first that blossomed into a string of violent staccato huffs. The gentleman across from him laughed as well, loud and louder still. The woman beside him picked it up, followed by the diners at the counter, the whole restaurant alight in a chain reaction of manic, animalistic hysteria. Like swarming insects, Elisa thought, signaled by collective command. The chorus of laughter soon drowned out her own.

  Their waitress stepped through the kitchen saloon doors. A pot of coffee slid from her grasp and shattered across the tiles. She clutched the doorjamb with one hand, the other at her stomach as she squealed and fell into a squat. It looked like she was peeing, a steaming puddle of coffee rolling out in a black tide. Shattered glass coruscated around her, a glittering spiral that refracted the electric white from the overheads. Elisa remained fixed to the sticky cracked vinyl of her seat until a firm grip on her arm lifted her from the booth.

  “I think it’s time to go,” Jason said. Only he wasn’t laughing. Not at all. He reached into his back pocket for his wallet, pulled out a Canadian ten-dollar bill, and tossed it onto the table. Stone-faced, he hustled her to the entrance, one hand on the small of her back while the other held her bag.

  “Did you see that . . . ?” Elisa said. But Jason didn’t answer, or didn’t hear; he simply walked out the door ahead of her.

  She trailed after him but froze at the entrance of the restaurant. On the far side of the open door, the overcast sky was an oppressive wall of gray that made her throw an arm across her eyes, her only protection against the diffuse and menacing light. For a flickering moment she lost her equilibrium, unsure of whether she was looking up at the bulging cloud cover or down into a vast and churning sea, or if there was even a difference between the two.

  Elisa lowered her head and hurried across the blacktop in the direction of the car, just as it started to rain.

  Chapter Eight

  * * *

  She is underwater. The current presses her down, then to the side, shakes her like a child with a doll it cannot unhand. Cobalt waves lap above, visible in a gleaming thread of sunshine; all else is darkness. A wild jerking and she rises, thrust up toward the sky. Upon breaking the surface she finds herself surrounded not by an ocean of water but rather by a tarry black sea, far darker than the depths below. What she had thought was water only a moment before is in fact much thicker, the viscous substance coagulating around her shoulders and neck, sticky clumps in her hair that carry with them the carrion stench of rotting meat. She scrambles for a rock, for driftwood, anything that will keep her from sinking below the surface once more. She is cold, and alone.

  Bobbing, she thrashes and the gelatinous bile fills her mouth, her nostrils, ears; it coats her eyes as well, the putrid film rapidly hardening into a mask. Finally, contact—a length of what might be a tree limb, bristling with a coarse fiber like pine needles. She tries to climb the limb but it lifts her from the mire instead, a gnarled arm bending to bring her against its rigid form, cradling her like a newborn. You are safe in our arms, a temperate voice says in its secret language, and she is surprised that she understands. You are safe so long as we are here.

  Her rescuer begins to clean her. Starting with her mouth, bristles scour her, hard and fast, brushing away the sludge. Wetness upon her face as a slithery tongue licks at her lips, takes up fluid as a hummingbird takes up nectar. Her nose and cheeks are scraped clean; her ears swabbed, and now she can hear a click-clacking of something at work, the sound of shell on hollow bone. Click-clack. The filth from her fingertips is scrubbed away, as it is from her breasts and belly, her body damp but drying in the hot air. She feels exposed, oxygenated. Click-clack. At last, the black mucus is licked from her eye sockets, and she lifts her heavy lids. Blinded by the light of a dozen distant suns h
igh above, she tries to focus on the face of her savior, her redeemer.

  Its eyes are onyx domes, black as the surrounding sludge. For a moment she swims in them, lost in their polyhedral depths, each facet of which appears to hold many more eyes. Each unblinking eye examines her within and without, the spindling branches of her redeemer’s fingers lingering upon her dimpled navel. Now she can see more of it towering above her, the rest of its red and ridged crest of a skull, twin horns quivering upon its crown like fat grubs wriggling in a mound of sodden dirt. Aspects of it seem impossibly large—two pairs of great sheltering wings, aglow with bioluminescent scarlet chitin, its trijointed limbs alive with twisting hairs, jagged jack-o’-lantern jaws moving sideways like a pair of garden shears—though its exoskeleton is slender, a narrow cage of interlocking muscle and bone.

  The Queen, the Queen. She trembles in her presence. She has birthed me anew.

  Her reverie is broken, but still she cannot scream. She can’t scream. She can’t wake up. She can’t wake or scream or cry, so she twists from it, its gangly limbs loosening their grip. She falls away, back toward the dark pool of life, the cavern lit by engorged tubers that sway from tangled roots draped in diaphanous webs. She spins downward, and right before she hits the liquid surface she spies her reflection in the black water, her mouth a crooked slash warped with shock.

  She is a gnarled but graceful tree. A tall gray birch, pale skin peeled from her flesh in strips to expose her lichen-flecked bones.

  Elisa jackknifed awake. Her fists released damp clumps of bedsheets and moved to the stem of her throat, where she ran her fingers along its length, felt for the familiar contours of bone and cartilage. She was herself again. But she no longer knew who that was exactly, and was unwilling to hazard a guess; she’d been wrong too many times before.

  She rose from her nap. It had been raining for days, and the sameness of the weather only exacerbated the disconcerting sensation of endlessness she’d felt since her return. Time worked differently now, every hour accordioning down into interminability. Still no sign of Blue. She vaguely recalled telling Jason he could go ahead and book their tickets back to New York, just to get him off her back. But were they scheduled to return tomorrow, or the next day, or was it in fact next week? She couldn’t remember. Not that it mattered to her, since she had no intention of leaving. But the indistinct date grew ever closer, and soon she would be forced to tell Jason that should he leave, he’d be going home alone.