Eleanor (35 page)

She is here
, Mea says.

The darkness says,
You did not fail her
.
 

Together, Mea and the darkness observe Eleanor, transformed, from a great distance. The river moves slowly, carrying Eleanor with it.
 

She does not know what has happened
, the darkness says.
Where she is.

She is becoming
, Mea says.
She learns. Watch.

Far away, an explosion of color flares bright, then dies away. As they watch, it reappears and persists, dancing like a nova in blackest space.
 

She deserves an explanation
, the darkness says.
Perhaps you should go to her now.

Eleanor feels a change in the darkness, as if something has bumped into her leg beneath the surface of the sea. Her colors fall into shadow again, and she expands herself to fill the dark, so that nothing else can enter. She tests the farthest reaches of her new
self
, searching for anything unusual, but she encounters nothing, no one.
 

And yet she senses that she is no longer alone.
 

A tiny tremor moves across her form, as if she were a sea and a ship’s wake had sent a long wave unrolling across her surface.
 

Eleanor has not moved. The wave is not hers.

She waits, hyper-aware, and is rewarded when another wave, slow and languid, passes over her. She imagines two rivers merging into one, their waters mingling, their currents colliding and wrestling for dominance.
 

Another wave, and with it, this time, something else.
 

Music
.

It sounds like nothing she has ever heard. There are no progressions, no chords. There are no lyrics or discernible tempo. She does not hear it as she would have back in the world—which is how she thinks of her past now, as her time
back in the world
, as if it were a place where she summered, and now she has returned home.
 

Maybe she really is dead.
 

The music hums through her shape, chasing the slow wave. It expands within her, thrumming delicately, like a tiny drumbeat. She thinks that this is what it is like for a person to
feel
music instead of to simply hear it. Her suspicion fades away, overtaken by the beauty of the music that echoes inside her, and colors rise around her like a fountain.
 

It occurs to Eleanor that she could remain here, in the dark,
as
the dark, for a million years, and never learn everything that it has to teach her. She absorbs the dancing music, each tremble and ripple and rise and fall. Music that belongs to someone else, some
thing
else.
 

But there is more than music. Rather, it is not music at all, but as she takes the vibrations deeply into herself, she discovers that she can
parse
them, that they have meaning and substance. The music is not music at all.
 

The music is language. It is
words
.
 

The other being, or person, or whatever it is, is communicating with her.
 

Eleanor relaxes her form, feels herself spread wide and billowy in the dark, fluttering, listening.
 

Feeling
.

You have come
, the other entity says.

She entertains those words for a long, long time, until they dissolve into tiny embers, each letter a flash of warmth inside her.
 

You.

have.

come.

Three words, and yet if Eleanor had any sense of time left, she might have thought that in the time it took for her to
feel
them, to understand them, that one million human lifetimes could have begun and ended. She thinks that this must have been what the astronauts experienced when they orbited the moon, sinking into their own darkness, removed from the sight of Earth, their words disappearing into the void, absent any reply.

Eleanor considers her reply for eons, plenty of time for millions more lifetimes to come and go, but before she understands how to speak it, the other entity speaks again. Its words wash over Eleanor, and she takes them in slowly.

You must have questions
, the Other says.

Eleanor does, and she speaks, and feels a beautiful melody escape her and recede into the distant dark like a ribbon. It is not unlike watching a rainbow take flight, lifting from the earth into the sky. She watches her reply grow thin and small, traversing an enormous gulf of black space—her sense of scale changes in an instant, and Eleanor no longer feels as though she is one with the darkness. She feels like a solar system in a galaxy full of solar systems, in a universe full of galaxies, in a multiverse replete with universes. Her reply travels six hundred thousand million trillion miles, and there, so far away in the dark, Eleanor sees her reply—her own wave of music, a single word—travel over another shape.
 

The Other.

Mea feels Eleanor speak to her, and vibrates happily to hear the girl’s voice for the first time.
 

Yes
, Eleanor says.
 

Mea says,
Ask. I will answer
.

Eleanor, on the far side of the river, tiny in the darkness, listens. Before she can reply, Mea adds,
I do not know all things.

That was my first question
, Eleanor says.
 

What was your first question?
Mea asks.

The girl hesitates, and then says,
I was going to ask if you are—if you are a god.
 

Mea says,
You may still ask.

No,
Eleanor says.
That’s okay. I don’t need to.

Why not?
Mea asks.
 

If you were a god, you would know all things
.

Do you believe in gods?
Mea returns.

That’s a very human question
, Eleanor says.

You are a very human girl.

I don’t seem to be. Not anymore.

This is temporary
, Mea says.
For a time.

If I’m human, what are you?

I am—other. I watch.

Other
, Eleanor says.
Like the checkbox on a form.
 

Mea is confused. The girl must feel this, because she explains.

Like when you have to fill out a survey
, Eleanor says.
It asks what your race is, and you can check Caucasian or Pacific… something—whatever it is. Islander. Pacific Islander. There’s always a little box that says ‘Other,’ with a blank next to it. I always wondered what went there. But now I know what goes there. You go there.

I am Other,
Mea says, still confused.
 

Eleanor is silent for a long time, and then says,
Where are we? Is it a place?
 

It is called the rift
, Mea says.

What is it?
Eleanor asks.
Am I dead?

You are very much alive
, Mea says.
The rift is not an afterlife.

Then how did I get here?

Mea says,
You always asked so many questions. You still do.

Across the river, Eleanor flares purple, and then a deep, muddled brown, as if declaring her confusion.
 

The darkness whispers to Mea.
You have frightened her.
 

I didn’t do anything
, Mea protests.
 

You are too familiar
, the darkness says.
Calm her. Ease her.

Mea says to Eleanor,
I don’t understand. You’re afraid.

Where am I? How did I get here?
Eleanor demands, and her voice is urgent, and breaks over Mea like a wave over a sea wall.
 

Don’t be afraid
, Mea cautions.
You will not come to any harm here.

ANSWER MY QUESTIONS,
Eleanor thunders, and Mea flinches.
WHY WON’T YOU ANSWER MY QUESTIONS?

It is too late
, the darkness says to Mea.
 

Wait,
Mea says.
No.

But it is too late. The seams unravel, and far across the river, the membrane opens.

Eleanor is frightened, and angry, and shouts her words at the Other. But the Other just seems confused, childlike, and Eleanor feels more anger at this than at its resistance to her questions. She wants to scream at it—
why bring me into this place if you don’t know what you’re doing
—but before she can speak, the darkness around her begins to tear. She can feel it withdrawing from her, pulling out of her lungs and escaping her mouth like a long, curling worm, and she would vomit if she could, except that something strange has begun to happen, something terrifying, and she stares in horror.

The darkness thins and becomes wispy, and through it Eleanor can see—she can see water far below her, dark and glinting with pale light, and in an instant the blackness releases her, expels her from the rift, and Eleanor falls through the hole in the darkness, and plummets into the sea.