The average train car, as that one was, weighs nearly seventy tons. Its frame is around eighty-five feet long and is solidly built of the strongest iron and steel. It is made to distribute its weight evenly across the ground, never tipping, never losing its balance, transporting its precious cargo with speed, safety, and efficiency. It is not in any way meant to rise up from the track it was made for, not an inch, not a millimeter.
And yet that night, with a great squalling and twisting and rattling of metal, and dust and pine needles and pinecones pouring off of its roof in tumbling cascades, Anne Sillenes lifted it up slowly, slowly, achingly slowly, and stood with its front balanced on her shoulders.
She trembled mightily and her breath came in quick, panicked gasps. Her body could not come close to functioning normally while lifting up such a stupendous weight, yet the arts that made her live were not hindered by the strain, or at least not yet. As the train car kept rising up and she saw more and more of what was before her, she almost lost her concentration in disbelief and delight. But then she saw the hill ahead, with so many trees and stretches of rocky ground, and at the very top was her goal, the little knoll where one end of the dam met the side of the valley, anchoring the whole construction.
“Oh, God,” she gasped. “Oh God, it’s so far …”
But she knew she would have to. Really, it was only a little ways, she told herself. She had already traveled so far in her life. This would be only a couple of steps more.
And that was the most dangerous part, she knew: lifting the train car was one thing, but walking with it was another. Each step would demand one perilous moment when the car’s whole weight was balanced on one foot while the other reached forward, and she was not sure if she could stay upright. And besides, she didn’t know if she could pull the train at all: she had not even gotten the wheels off the old tracks, and would they even work in the soft earth?
She began leaning forward. Her quivering increased, and she tried to ignore the tickling in her throat as some fluid trickled down its sides. But then there was a great clunk from behind her as the wheels fell off the track, and another, and she staggered forward with one foot ahead and the other behind.
She had done it. She could move. She swallowed, and began to push forward again. She took one step, and another, and then another. She did not know it, for she could not look behind, but the wheels were not rolling with her but digging huge gouges in the earth. But it did not matter: even with this resistance she could push the train car forward.
Suddenly she wondered what she was doing. She was in so much pain … Why was she carrying such a huge weight? Why did she need to pull it up the hill?
She did not know, but she knew she had to keep carrying it. She had to carry this train car up to the top of the knoll, for some reason that was of upmost importance. And she realized she was whispering something, over and over again: “Anne Marie Sillenes. You are Anne Marie Sillenes …”
Every inch was a battle, every step a war. She felt blood running down her back from where the axle bit into her shoulders, but she ignored it. The vertebrae in her neck were pulverized, but the symbols inked above them did not stop functioning, and she held her head high. Something wet had happened to her knee, and she thought the kneecap there had broken free and was floating in fluid, but she did not care, and kept pushing forward.
Sometimes she remembered why. Other times she could not, but pushed regardless.
Anne Marie Sillenes. Annie. Anne Sillenes …
And as she carried the train car up the moonlit hill, crushing stone and root and heaving with each step, she began to think that this was not a new weight at all; perhaps she had been carrying it her whole life, from the very beginning, always staggering up the hill pushing this immense load, and she had only been waiting for the right opportunity to lay it down, which had finally come tonight.
Anne. Annie. Fran Marie Sillenes.
And what if I drop it? she asked herself. What if it should fall from my fingers and slide back down the hill?
Well, then, she said. Then I will simply pick it back up, and start again. It would be only a few minutes more. A few last steps in a long line of them.
Annie Fran Sillenes. Franny Beatty Sillenes. Franny Sillenes.
And as she dragged this terrible burden up the hillside, she realized she was saying things and concentrating on memories that were utterly unfamiliar to her. Why was she chanting these words? Whose name was this? And why was she focusing on this handful of fractured recollections? They were ghosts of events floating in her mind, without reference or context, like she’d stolen the memories from a stranger … and though she did not know who the people in them were, she thought of these memories as happy. So she decided to keep concentrating on them as she carried this terrible weight, remembering this strange girl (what was her name? Was it Annie?) and her memories and the things she had seen.
She remembered when the girl had first seen him at the fair, this short, ferocious young man with the old man’s eyes, and how he had juggled and sung for the crowd and yet he’d bungled his act because he kept glancing at her, unable to take his eyes away. And later when he had approached her, grinning and proud, she had asked him if he was from around here and he had said no, no, I am from very far away, very far away indeed. He’d then earned her favor with a special treasure: a ripe, golden-pink peach, and as the girl had caressed its fuzzy skin (his eyes growing bright as he watched) she had asked where he’d gotten it and he had grinned and shrugged, and she’d asked if it was from his hometown and he had said no, no, he came from places even farther than the ones that had grown the peach, and those places were very far from here. And she had smiled then, puzzled.
She remembered it would not be the last time the girl would be confused, but she could not remember who this young man was. What was his name? How did she remember him? She did not know.
Fran Marie Sillenes. Annie. Anne Fran Sillenes.
She remembered how the girl and the young man would travel in the trains, the girl seated by the window so she could watch the country race by, he lounging with his head in her lap like a schoolboy, and it was on one of these journeys that he’d told her he had been traveling his whole life but when he was with her he felt like he was standing still. And he’d reached into his pocket and taken out a little box and the girl’s heart had begun fluttering madly, and he’d said he wished to stay still with her forever, no matter where he was, and would you come with me, Annie, would you come with me to the far places at the end of the sky and bring with you the home that I have found in your heart, and he’d opened the box and within it was a little silver ring with many fine engravings, and she’d looked at him and he was weeping, and she’d said yes, yes, forever yes, I will be with you I will be yours.
Did the girl love him? Did he love her? She hoped so. It would be so nice, for them to love one another …
Fran. Franny. Fran Beatty. Franny Marie Beatty. Where do I know these names from?
And she remembered one day when the girl and the young man had been traveling yet again, the young man leading his troupe to the next town, and he’d said he’d been doing this for a long, long time, but now that he had found her he felt he could stop, and pass the duty on to someone else. He would stop, he’d said to the girl, and let himself grow old with her, for he’d taken special cares to make sure that he was very bad at growing old, and the girl had smiled and asked if that was so why he would want to do a silly thing like grow old, and he’d said that when he was with her every moment was perfect, and against a perfect moment the centuries and millennia are as a fly batting at a windowpane. And he’d kissed her neck then, the pale creamy spot at the corner of her jaw, and the girl had laughed and embraced him, and all the world was golden and good and their sky would never have a cloud.
I wonder what happened to that girl, she thought as she carried the train car up the hill. I bet they lived happily ever after, didn’t they. I bet they lived together and had lots of
babies. I bet it was sunsets neverending.
Maybe I will see them, she said to herself. Maybe that’s why I’m carrying this awful weight. Maybe they are at the top of the hill and I am carrying this up to them and they need it for something, I don’t know what but they need it for something, and then once I am there and they have it we will all live together and everything will be happy and good.
She nodded to herself as she carried the train car.
I know these stories. That’s what happens in these stories. That’s what will happen.
It would not be long now. Only a few feet more.
Far down the valley from where Colette carried George, Stanley ducked and wove west through the pines, softly chanting the song to himself, letting the echoes spill out to trail across the shoreline. For Stanley it was always painful to perform the song; it was like having a charging river pour out of his eyes and mouth, and it took so much control. It all wanted to be sung, to reverberate throughout the world it’d made when time was not time, so it had to be harnessed back at every second. The urge was so great that he could not even speak a word; to open his mouth and make any noise might cause the song to come spilling out.
Stanley hoped Colette and George had climbed far enough to be out of danger. He glanced back at his pursuers. Some were dark, protean shapes that were difficult to make out, and others wore the images of men in gray suits, yet they leaped down the hillside with astonishing speed and agility. Their numbers appeared limitless.
But that was good. He wanted as many as he could get. All of them, if possible.
The gray tidal wave of the dam rose up on his right. Hopefully Annie would be nearly there, he thought. Before the dam the waters churned out to tumble over the rocks, and Stanley searched for a set of trees hopefully close to the middle. He spotted a promising set and began wading across as fast as he could.
He picked the hugest, stoutest tree and grasped its lower branches. But as he did he thought he saw someone out of the corner of his eye … someone gray and faint, standing in the water …
No. No, that hadn’t been it. They’d been standing on the water, as if it’d been frozen.
He turned to look. And for the quickest moment, Stanley felt as if everything stood still. The winds did not blow, the waters did not trickle. Everything had stopped. It was the most perplexing sensation.
Then the moment ended, and he looked around. There was no one there. The specter he’d seen appeared to be gone. He shook himself, and felt the side of his face. It was as if something had just touched him there, very, very gently …
He heard the sound of the wolves sprinting down the hills, and he remembered what he was doing. He grasped the lowest limbs of the tree, picked himself up, and climbed up several levels of branches. Then he took his chain and wrapped it around his waist and the trunk and locked it tight. He kept his eyes averted from the wave of darkness descending the hills to surround him and instead hugged the trunk tight with both hands, and hoped that Colette and George had gotten as far away as possible.
When the darkness grew close it again calcified into the forms of men in gray suits. Beyond the front line they faded into shadow and obscure movement. All of their blank, gray eyes were fixed on Stanley.
“We’ve treed you?” said a calm, low voice below. “Is that how this is to end? How ignominious.”
Stanley did not respond, but clutched the tree tighter.
“A few feet does not matter,” said the wolf at the bottom of the tree. “Not for what is coming. How horrible it must be to carry all that within you. Almost as horrible as it is for us to live with this world growing within us, like a tumor. We are tired of being broken up. We wish to be whole once more. And we shall be, soon.”
The sound of the river began to fade away, and all was silent. It was a sensation George had described many times, but Stanley himself had never felt it; the song affected different people in different ways, depending on which piece you had. Yet now he knew the deep horror of feeling like the world was falling away from him, bit by bit, and he cracked one eye to see what they were doing.
The river before the dam had gone as flat and still as a mirror. Before Stanley had been able to see the rocks at the bottom, but now the bottom seemed curiously dark. It was as if there was a dark split in the middle and it was spreading outward until all the rocks and water were gone and he was looking into an endless abyss. Only there was something down there at the very bottom, something unimaginably huge looking up at him, and it was trying very hard to claw its way out.
Stanley remembered what George had said he’d seen in the burned-down remains of his theater. The wolves there had called something out of the shadows, given something terrible a name and an entry point …
“Yes,” said the wolf. “It is coming for you. Don’t you see it? Can you not feel it watching you?”
Yet rather than looking down into the abyss, Stanley looked up at the dam. The wolf, surprised by this reaction, followed his line of sight.
The wolf squinted at the dam. “What is that?” he said.
There was something moving on the hill where the dam ended. It was very big and bulky, and it trundled across the hilltop with the unhappy pace of a large beetle. Then as it heaved itself to one side it happened to pass just before the moon, and with such light shining behind it one could see the form of a small, thin woman below it, and she seemed to be dragging the huge object forward with a very great resolution.
The wolf ’s eyes widened. “What?” he said. “Wait … No, no!”
But by then, of course, it was far too late.
She finally crested the small knoll at the edge of the dam. The effort of dragging the train car up the rocky hill had rendered her unrecognizable: her face was wreathed in blood from where her eyes and nose had started bleeding, both of her legs were riddled with fractures and rends, and the toes of her right foot were mostly gone. Yet the inscriptions on her skin still held, though she could tell that they were finally straining, so with deep, heavy gasps she powered herself up the last few feet. She was finally before the lake, and she blinked the blood out of her eyes and looked.
The moon had risen high in the sky, and now its face was caught in every angle of the lake’s waters, thousands and millions of little broken moons dancing among the waves. In her fatigue she could not tell the difference between the lake and the night sky; each one was a black sea peppered with shreds of white. She was not at all sure why she was there, but she thought it a powerfully beautiful sight to behold, almost a heavenly one, and she began to laugh.
She saw the edge of the dam ahead, and suddenly she knew what she had to do. She knew she could never lift the train car up and throw it down on the dam. That left only one option, then.
She took a breath, dug her feet in, and charged forward. The train car groaned as its mangled wheels jostled over the last few stones, but it did not break up or fall apart, and she did not take her eyes away from the shining sea before her; she wished to join it, to jump out among all those stars, and perhaps she would float then, suspended among all those dancing lights, and then maybe, just maybe, she could sleep.
When she came to the edge of the knoll she crouched down with the train car on her back and sprang off. She felt her feet leave the ground and heard the train car sliding off the rocks behind her. The axle ripped her around and around as the car tumbled down to the dam, and as she twirled the boundaries between the lake and the sky blurred even more than before, turning all the world around her into a star-strewn sky, and she shut her eyes and crossed her arms and smiled and waited for sleep to take her.
As Stanley watched, the dam did not precisely break like he’d expected; unzip was more the right word, as the train car smoothly split it down the southern side and the stone began to peel back with a roar. He thought he saw a tiny rag-doll figure fall with the train car, and his heart froze at the sight. He moaned softly and hugged the tree tighter.
“Run!” cried one of the wolves below. �
��Run, run!”
But it was too late for that. Though the wolves tried to move, they were just at the foot of the dam, and the water was already surging down upon them. It was an enormous wave, a blank wall of water, and as it approached Stanley saw it was much, much bigger than he’d expected, easily tall enough to reach him. He wrapped one arm up in the chain and watched with wide eyes as the water rolled toward him.
He realized then that some situations, no matter how dire, provide an outside chance of outrageous luck that allows one to believe one just might survive; yet on seeing this tremendous crush of water roaring down to him, Stanley knew this was not one of them. The vast wave was already swallowing trees on either side of the river, ones much sturdier than his, and his chain and his grasp on the tree would be like paper beneath its crushing tons.
And as he watched, Stanley realized he had always known in his heart that this had been a possible outcome, and yet he’d done it anyway. But he did not feel regret, or any fear. The only thing he thought of was George. Though his time with his son had been brief and he’d allowed his duty to come between them, this last act would be the greatest of all of his presents.
And besides, he thought, he was immensely tired of carrying the song. It was so heavy these days, so incredibly heavy. As he began to feel the first waves of mist, he wondered if perhaps this would be a peace for him.
CHAPTER 35
The Hanged Man
Colette turned when she heard the train car crack through the dam and watched wide-eyed as the water burst through the crumbling wall and cascaded down into the river valley. “Oh, Jesus,” she said, and laid George down on the ground to see the rest of the fallout. Small trees sank down below the waves and taller ones took on an uncomfortable, drunken lean. She saw dark figures rolling with the water, but they seemed limp and broken, and they began to melt back into the shadows after a moment.
The Troupe Page 42
