The Boundless Sublime (34 page)

Why did I care so much? I knew he was a charlatan. I’d seen proof. I knew he was crazy, and dangerous. So why did his rejection hurt so much?

I’d planned this for so long, thought about it day after day for weeks. I never imagined it would be like this. With every step my body grew heavier, more leaden. Was I walking towards freedom, or away from it?

I reached the end of the street and started to turn left, towards the housing development, the way I had done for Operation Hush-Hush. But I stopped. There was nothing
for me there. Just sleeping bodies and well-stocked pantries. I needed to find my way home, if such a place even still existed. I turned right, into the unknown.

Although it wasn’t a cold night, I shivered in my cotton nightdress. My bare feet were soon aching and stinging. I’d thought I was tough, after all my training. But I wasn’t sure how far I’d make it before I gave up.

Eventually I came to a well-lit intersection with traffic lights and shops. It was raised up on an incline, and before me I could see the lights of the city, and the long snake of a freeway. I blinked. I knew this place. I’d been here before. Somehow, I’d never quite been able to imagine the Institute as existing in the world, just another building in my city. It had always seemed remote, separate. But this wasn’t that far from school, from my house. The long, nauseous, blindfolded journey in the van had been a ruse, meandering around backstreets to create the illusion of distance. I could walk home from here. It’d take less than an hour. I crossed the street and headed down the hill, towards home.

I heard the rumble of an engine, and white light washed over the footpath as a car pulled up alongside me. I froze. It was him. Daddy. Daddy had come to get me. I felt a giddy mix of terror and relief. At least I wasn’t on my own anymore. At least I wouldn’t have to make the hard choices. Daddy would do what was right, even if that meant killing me. I closed my eyes and waited.

‘Excuse me, Miss? Is everything okay?’

I opened my eyes. It wasn’t Daddy. It wasn’t the Institute’s white van. It was a police car, the window rolled down and a man leaning out the window.

I looked down at myself and realised in a flash how odd I must appear – a skinny girl in a white nightgown, out on the streets at night. No bag, no shoes, no friends.

‘Miss?’

Everything felt unreal, as though I was watching myself on a screen. How did you talk to people who weren’t your family? How did you address a police officer?

What if he’s a spy? What if he’s from the Quintus Septum?

‘Miss? What’s your name?’

Heracleitus.

Heracleitus.

My name is Heracleitus.

‘Miss?’

The passenger door opened and another officer got out, a woman. My mouth filled with saliva, and my body started to shake.

‘Miss, I need to know who you are in order to help you. Who are you?’

She came around to the footpath and put a hand on my shoulder, and tears oozed from my eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ I whispered.

I was standing on a cliff. Behind me stood Daddy, Lib, Stan, Welling, Pippa and the rest of my Institute family. And Fox, looking as serious and beautiful as the day I’d first seen him. Before me was endless blackness, stretching down into an unknowable abyss. I might shatter at the bottom, a heap of dust and dry bones. I might fall forever.

Fox stretched out his hand, reaching for me. I wanted to turn back, to fall into his arms and smell his Fox-smell and forget everything.

But Fox was gone, maybe dead, and I couldn’t forget. I couldn’t go back.

You can let it keep pulling you down into the darkness. Or you can fly.

My only choice was to jump. It was the only way I’d ever know the truth.

‘Ruby,’ I told the police officer. ‘My name’s Ruby Jane Galbraith, and I’m trying to get home.’

Life accelerated, and I seemed to jolt from moment to moment. Sitting in the back of the police car, not knowing how to form the right words. Wondering if I could trust them. If I could tell them about Fox and Maggie and the Monkeys. Getting out of the car to find myself not at home but at a hospital.

Mum arriving. Hugging her and recognising the scent of her lavender hand cream.

A doctor taking blood and urine samples, and asking a million questions. What had my diet been like? Had I been taking drugs? Drinking alcohol? When had I last menstruated? I mumbled numb answers.
Simple. No. No. I don’t remember.

She asked me if I’d been taking any medication, and I recited my list of supplements, relieved to have easy answers at hand.
Vitamins A, B and D. Magnesium. Iron. Sodium. Zinc. Selenium. Picric Acid. Silver Nitrate. Phosphorus. Calcium Sulphide. Copper. Antimony Tartrate. Sulphur.

The doctor looked at me, her brows raised. She glanced over at Mum and the police officer, and then back at me.

‘Where exactly have you been living?’

‘I—’ My throat closed over and I shook my head.

‘She isn’t ready to talk,’ Mum said. ‘She needs to go home.’

The doctor made a note on her clipboard. ‘You’ve put a lot of strain on your body. You’re drastically underweight, and I think you’re suffering from vitamin poisoning.’

‘Poisoning?’ asked Mum, her voice tight with anxiety.

‘Iron toxicity can give you some serious gastrointestinal problems, as well as fatigue and joint pain,’ said the doctor. ‘The selenium you’ve been taking is causing your hair loss, and can also cause mild nerve damage. But it’s the Vitamin A I’m really worried about. It can cause dizziness and mental changes, as well as permanent damage to your bladder and kidneys. You can suffer from cracked skin, increased sensitivity to light, an erratic heart rate and muscle weakness. Some of the other things you’ve been taking aren’t approved supplements – they’re ingredients often found in homeopathic remedies, but I don’t know what effects they’ll have on your body if you’ve been taking them in high concentrations. We’ll have to wait until your blood and urine samples come back from pathology.’

My head nodded, as my mind struggled to catch up. Daddy had known. He’d told us all those things were signs that we were approaching sublimation. He said it was the body preparing to release, to succumb to the light within. But all along we’d been poisoning ourselves. Vague and dizzy and sick. Weak. Just the way he wanted us.

The doctor told me I would probably feel pretty terrible over the next few days, as my body detoxed from all the vitamins. In the meantime, I was to drink plenty of water, get lots of rest and eat a balanced, healthy diet, high in fats in order to regain the weight I’d lost.

I nodded like a robot, wondering exactly what a balanced, healthy diet looked like.

I had to see a psychiatrist next. I tried to say what he wanted to hear, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell the whole truth. I wasn’t ready to betray them yet. To betray Daddy. I kept things purposefully vague, and eventually Mum insisted on taking me home, promising to bring me back for a follow-up once I’d had some sleep. The psychiatrist
resisted, urging me to spend a few days in the hospital while they ran more tests. But Mum won.

I pretended to fall asleep in the car so I wouldn’t have to make small talk. The house was clean and neat, with no trace of cigarette smoke in the air. Mum looked alert and concerned. Like a mum was supposed to. I mumbled a
goodnight
and climbed into my bed, feeling like it was so soft I’d get swallowed up in it and suffocate. Mum came to check on me several times through the night. Each time I faked sleep. The rest of the time I just lay there in the dark, waiting for dawn.

I’d spent eight months in the Institute of the Boundless Sublime, and it had taken me less than four hours to get home. Why had it taken me so long to leave?

19

I got up when I could hear Mum moving around the kitchen. I opened my wardrobe and looked at the neatly hanging and folded clothes. It was too much. Too many choices. I closed the doors and stayed in my Institute nightgown. My feet were still sore, white and scabbed over from walking barefoot in the cold.

The kitchen was bright and clean and terrifying. Mum sat at the counter with her hands wrapped around a mug of hot water and lemon. She was trying to look relaxed, but I could feel the tension radiating off her in waves. Her knuckles were white around the mug. She took in my appearance again. My filthy nightdress. I expected to see happiness in her eyes. And maybe hurt. But I didn’t expect fear.

She was afraid of me.

‘Did you sleep okay?’

I nodded, even though it was a lie.

‘Good.’ Mum looked down at her mug, searching for something to say. ‘Can I make you some breakfast? Something healthy, like the doctor said. Some muesli? Fruit salad?’

The thought of eating anything made my stomach churn with nausea. I shook my head.

‘Okay.’

I felt sorry for her. She was trying. ‘Thank you,’ I said, feeling awkward. ‘For the offer. Breakfast. But I’m not hungry.’

I saw her eyes pass over me again. My angular bones. She didn’t understand what it was like. The clarity of hunger. The feeling of control, when you stop being a slave to your body. When you become the master. I remembered mornings sitting here at the breakfast bar with Anton, both of us mindlessly shovelling cereal into our mouths, our eyes glued to screens, our brains shut down. I didn’t want to go back to that. I didn’t think I could.

‘So,’ said Mum, after another agonising silence. ‘What do you want to do today?’

It was a question I had no idea how to answer. What did I want to do? I wanted to go back. I wanted schedules and orders and to be assigned to a working group. I wanted to be told what to do.

I wanted to burn the Institute to the ground.

I shook my head and shrugged.

Mum attempted a smile, lines of concern knitted tight between her brows. ‘Just take it slow, okay?’ she said. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’

She was different. Everything was different. The house was clean and airy and light. Aunty Cath was long gone, but Mum was busy and organised and full of purpose. There was no sign of the despair, the trembling ash that I had left. Something had happened. Something had changed.

You. You left. You left and she got better. You should leave again. You don’t belong here
.

Doubt took up residence in my hollow belly, and bitterness flooded my mouth. I had to escape. I couldn’t stay here, being slowly torn to pieces by Mum’s sad eyes.

‘May I go to the toilet?’ I asked.

Mum frowned. ‘You – you don’t need to ask my permission.’

Of course I didn’t. I was home. I could do whatever I liked.

I went into the bathroom and used the toilet, rubbing the soft toilet paper between my fingers and wondering what they put in it to make it so soft, so white. I washed my hands and splashed cold water on my face. A living corpse stared at me from the mirror – yellowing skin stretched over sunken cheeks. I looked away, sickened. No wonder Mum was afraid of me. I turned the cold tap on in the shower and put my hand under the spray. Slipping out of my nightgown, I caught a glimpse of bony shoulderblades and cage-like ribs in the mirror. Taking a deep breath, I reached for the hot tap. Steam filled the bathroom, warm and inviting. I watched the water splash against the glass shower screen, drops running into each other and down to the tiled floor. I stepped in.

It was indescribable. The heat and pressure of hot water on my back, on my scalp, on my face. I wept with heaving, sobbing breaths, tears mingling with the warm water. I’d spent so long trying to be strong. Trying to be sublime. Denying myself food, comfort, warmth. But I didn’t have to do that anymore.

I lathered myself in body wash, the sickly scent of it as overwhelming as the foaming slipperiness on my skin. I washed my hair, handfuls of it falling out as it came loose under my fingers, and watched it swirl down the drain.

After my shower, I pulled on fleecy tracksuit pants and a baggy jumper. Everything hung loose on my bony frame – I could see that I looked ridiculous. I dug in my wardrobe for a gauzy red scarf, and draped it over the mirror.

I went into the kitchen, and let Mum put a cup of herbal tea and a bowl of porridge in front of me.