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The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful. They are fickle, unsteady as moonlight on water, or shadows in a storm. If you insist on calling them, take heed: be careful what you ask for, be willing to pay the price. And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.
“And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.”
No, Adeline has decided she would rather be a tree, like Estele. If she must grow roots, she would rather be left to flourish wild instead of pruned, would rather stand alone, allowed to grow beneath the open sky. Better that than firewood, cut down just to burn in someone else’s hearth.
If only you could see it, he says. I would give anything, she answers. One day, he promises. One day, I’ll show you. You’ll see it all.
Stories are a way to preserve one’s self. To be remembered. And to forget.
A secret kept. A record made. The first mark she left upon the world, long before she knew the truth, that ideas are so much wilder than memories, that they long and look for ways of taking root.
Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered? It’s like that Zen koan, the one about the tree falling in the woods. If no one heard it, did it happen? If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?
Time begins to lose its meaning—and yet, she has not lost track of time.
The darkness claimed he’d given her freedom, but really, there is no such thing for a woman, not in a world where they are bound up inside their clothes, and sealed inside their homes, a world where only men are given leave to roam.
“I don’t mean in that normal, time flies way,” Henry’s saying. “I mean feeling like it’s surging by so fast, and you try to reach out and grab it, you try to hold on, but it just keeps rushing away. And every second, there’s a little less time, and a little less air, and sometimes when I’m sitting still, I start to think about it, and when I think about it, I can’t breathe.
“Small places make for small lives. And some people are fine with that. They like knowing where to put their feet. But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way. You cannot leave a mark.”
But ideas are so much wilder than memories, so much faster to take root.”
Live long enough, and people open up like books.
A comedy of memory and absence
His heart has a draft. It lets in light.
Blink and you’re twenty-eight, and everyone else is now a mile down the road, and you’re still trying to find it, and the irony is hardly lost on you that in wanting to live, to learn, to find yourself, you’ve gotten lost.
You’re great, Henry. You really are. But you’re not
Easy to stay on the path when the road is straight and the steps are numbered.
Not the right fit. Not the right look. Not the right focus. Not the right drive. Not the right time. Not the right job. Not the right path. Not the right future. Not the right present. Not the right you. Not you. (Not me?) There’s just something missing. (Missing…) From us. What could I have done? Nothing. It’s just … (Who you are.) I didn’t think we were serious. (You’re just too … … sweet. … soft. … sensitive.) I just don’t see us ending up together. I met someone. I’m sorry. It’s not you. Swallow it down. We’re not on the same page. We’re not in the same place. It’s not you. We can’t help
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Click, and it stays still. Blink, and it leaps forward.
“My little storm cloud,” she says. “Don’t let it get too dark in there.”
“But isn’t it wonderful,” she says, “to be an idea?”
“What, they don’t tip booksellers?” “Nope.” “Not even when you recommend a good book?” He shakes his head. “That’s a crime,” she says.
“No, it’s not,” says Robbie. “I love you. I always have.”
...
That he’d blinked and somehow years had gone by, and everyone else had carved their trenches, paved their paths, and he was still standing in a field, uncertain where to dig.
Take a drink every time you hear a lie. You’re a great cook. (They say as you burn toast.) You’re so funny. (You’ve never told a joke.) You’re so … … handsome. … ambitious. … successful. … strong. (Are you drinking yet?) You’re so … … charming. … clever. … sexy. (Drink.) So confident. So shy. So mysterious. So open. You are impossible, a paradox, a collection at odds. You are everything to everyone. The son they never had. The friend they always wanted. A generous stranger. A successful son. A perfect gentleman. A perfect partner. A perfect … Perfect … (Drink.) They love your body. Your abs.
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Vive la France.
She turns, her sword still raised, and finds Luc, his edges black against the blaze. He doesn’t retreat from the sword, simply reaches up and runs his hand along the steel with all the grace of a lover touching skin, a musician fondling an instrument. She half expects the blade to sing beneath his fingers.
“Adeline, for someone with nothing but time, you are always in a hurry.”
“Do not mistake this—any of it—for kindness, Adeline.” His eyes go bright with mischief. “I simply want to be the one who breaks you.”
Perhaps he meant to cast her into chaos. Perhaps he thought she was getting too comfortable, growing too stubborn. Perhaps he wanted her to call for him again. To beg him to come back. Perhaps perhaps perhaps—but she will never know.
Ideas are wilder than memories.
Memories are stiff, but thoughts are freer things. They throw out roots, they spread and tangle, and come untethered from their source. They are clever, and stubborn, and perhaps—perhaps—they are in reach.
You thought you could erase me from this world, but you cannot. I am still here. I will always be here.
“It’s like living with déjà vu,” she says, “only you know exactly where you’ve seen or heard or felt a thing before. You know every time, and place, and they sit stacked on top of each other like pages in a very long and complicated book.”
“But when you live long enough, even madness ends.”
Here is a new kind of silence, rarer than the rest. The easy quiet of familiar spaces, of places that fill simply because you are not alone within them.
But as the music rings out across the lawn, she can’t take her eyes from the dark.
“It does not matter,” he says, hand falling. “You do not matter, Adeline.” The words bite, even now.
I thought that you were bigger than us. But you’re not. You’re just as fickle and wanting as the humans you disdain.”
But they were only pieces, stripped of context. Sculptured birds on marble plinths, and paintings behind ropes. Didactic boxes taped to whitewashed walls and glass boxes that keep the present from the past. It is a different thing when the glass breaks. It is her mother in the doorway, withered to bone. It is Remy in the Paris salon. It is Sam, inviting her to stay, every time. It is Toby Marsh, playing their song. The only way Addie knows how to keep going is to keep going forward. They are Orpheus, she is Eurydice, and every time they turn back, she is ruined.
“Because happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end,” he says, “everyone wants to be remembered.”
“Adeline,” he says, a shade of pity in his voice. “You have not been human since the night we met. You will never be human again.”
“Two beers,” says Henry, and the bartender nods, and steps away, comes back a minute later, and sets down their drinks. But only one is a beer. The other is Champagne, a candied rose petal floating in the center.
It is just a storm, but there is always another waiting in its wake. It is just a storm, just a storm—but tonight it is too much, and he is not enough,
But in the moment, shoes already skimming night, the simple truth is that he would have sold his soul for less, would have traded an entire life of this for just a day—an hour, a minute, a moment—of peace. Just to numb the pain inside his chest. Just to quiet the storm inside his head. He is so tired of hurting, so tired of being hurt. And that is why, when the stranger holds out his hand, and offers to pull Henry back from the edge, there is no hesitation. He simply says yes.
But this is a silence born of strategy. This is the silence of a chess game being played. And this time, Addie has to win.
She missed him the way someone might miss the sun in winter, though they still dread its heat. She missed the sound of his voice, the knowing in his touch, the flint-on-stone friction of their conversations, the way they fit together. He is gravity. He is three hundred years of history. He is the only constant in her life, the only one who will always, always remember.
“A deal is a deal,” he says, the words bending on the air. “And it is done.”
