Gravity Box and Other Spaces (34 page)

It was the one from the first visit, the tall one who had come forward and extended her hand. This recognition allowed Peter to regain some composure.

“Yes. Do you know him?”

A hum filled the air as they turned toward each other. The leader hissed and cut the air with the flat of her hand, silencing the others. She took another step toward Peter. “Higgins has been the caretaker. Guardian. We trust Higgins.”

“You want to know if you can trust me.”

She went to the carving of Elyssa. “You made this?”

“I'm a sculptor. It's what I do.”

“Can you repair?”

“Repair what? I'm not sure I understand.”

“We need the work of your hands. Follow. Please.”

“Wait.” Peter said. “Who are you?”

“I am called Paphos.”

“I'm Peter. This is Elyssa.” When Paphos said nothing, Peter asked, “Are you the leader?”

“No,” Paphos said. “I am the words.”

“The words?”

“I speak for the coppice.” Surreal

Before he could ask anything more, Paphos walked out the door. The others followed. Elyssa retrieved her shirt from the workshop floor. She answered Peter's questioning eyes with a shrug. Together they followed Paphos and the rest into the woods.

Light fell down from the canopy spilling onto the forest floor illuminating its placid greens and browns. Though Peter recognized the path they took, in this moment the path, the forest, all of it had taken on an ethereal beauty.

They passed through a declivity into a compact meadow. Paphos walked ahead, among the few stands of trees. Reaching the middle, she stopped and lifted her arms. The stillness seemed to deepen, as if the forest had become attentive. She began a wordless, sonorous hum that grew into a song which traveled through Peter's thoughts, touching dormant places, eliciting feelings for which he had no name. The world around them seemed to soften, the trees leaning toward the singer.

He did not see how it began, though he was looking right at them. The trees undulated, shimmered, and suddenly there were faces, arms, and legs—feet stepping free of the soil where there had just been roots—stands of laurels and chestnuts and hickory changing from grove to conclave.

“My God,” Elyssa said.

“There are more,” Paphos said, “but many are not ready to trust. They watch.”

“How—?” Peter started to ask.

“By many roads, over many years,” Paphos said. “Each has her own story.”

Peter closed his eyes against a storm of his reactions, wonder and fear, denial and glee, doubt and hope, all bound by a slender cord of sanity stretched thin by a suspicion of mental breakdown. He waited until the feelings ebbed. When he opened his eyes again, the women were watching him. He saw smooth bodies, golden complexions, hair from near-black to ashen white. The Golden Age of Greece in living sculpture. A strange quite
settled over him, an acceptance. Peter relaxed and allowed himself to see what they presented without trying to apply the filter of reason.

Imperfections emerged.

Peter stepped toward a short woman with thick bronze hair and wide-spaced green eyes. She started to back away, but Paphos said something. She stopped and let Peter approach. From her left collarbone, tracing a crescent around her breast down to her ribs, the skin was uneven, as if it had been cut open and then tugged together like a flap. Peter ran fingertips along the raised scar.

They came to him then, showing him their injuries, scars, and amputations. It was a desecration.

Finally, unable to take in more, he turned toward Paphos. “What happened?” he asked.

“We have been hunted. Sometimes we are hurt escaping. Can you repair? Can you—restore?”

“What? They need a doctor! A hospital!”

“Look closer.”

Paphos took his arm and brought him to a woman missing her forearm. She spoke briefly and the dryad raised her stump. Peter hesitated, then reached out, moved closer. This was not an arm, not skin, or bone, or torn flesh. Bone and flesh were replaced by heartwood, sapwood, and bark. He ran his hands along the surface of her arm. It was not supple, but dry and hard. He looked back at Paphos.

“We need no physicians,” she said. “We need an artist.”

He worked the sandpaper over the last patch of puckered imperfection around her cheek and just below, nerves humming in sympathy with the pain it should have caused. The woman sat stoically, her attention shifting from his face, to his studio, and out the window to the
world beyond. Peter had set up a lamp very close; perspiration rolled down his face and back, with an occasional drop landing on her folded hands, but she did not seem to mind the heat or his perspiration.

The damage was barely visible now after several hours' careful work. All that remained was a slight variation in color. He finished and brought a mirror around so she could see. She stared, unmoving, for a long time. Finally, she touched his face and smiled. Without a word, she left his workshop and returned to the forest.

Peter wiped his face and went to one of his workbenches. Fingers lay in various stages of refinement. The last several days had been taken up by a series of visits from injured dryads, each seeking his skills to repair cuts, gouges, slices, cracks, and missing parts. One required a new eye, which he had roughed out on another table. Peter had been working ten, sometimes twelve hours a day.

At night, Elyssa dragged him away, fed him, then enveloped him, cocooning him in herself. He had always loved her, but he could not remember experiencing her so completely. They melted into each other, tangling souls, renewing each other. He was stunned by his own response, as if suddenly the dam blocking him had burst and he could hold nothing back. He thought the work he was now doing had freed him to find her again, but he did not question it too closely, as if afraid understanding what was happening might end it. He had never felt so fulfilled.

He picked up one of the fingers and held it under a lamp, studying it.

“Hey,” Elyssa said, putting a hand on his neck and massaging lightly. “Why don't you take a break?”

He looked around. “Where's Dulcie? You two are usually inseparable.”

“In the woods.”

He set the finger down and looked at her. “I thought you had to get back to Chicago.”

“Oops.” She grinned.

“Thanks.”

She leaned in and kissed him. They lingered against each other.

The kiss ended and Peter drew back to see her face. Expectation and promise, a reflection of what he hoped she saw.

“But you have a point,” she said suddenly. “The show.”

He groaned. “I'm sorry, I—”

“Not to worry, I was able to push back the opening.” She smiled. “Some things take precedence.”

“Oh?”

“You, for one thing. Us. I haven't seen you this engaged since you came back.” She bit her lower lip. “I don't want to lose this.”

His heart beat a little faster. “Neither do I.”

“Is it possible we can keep this going without—?”

“Without them?” He nodded toward the door. “Maybe. I don't know.” He swallowed thickly. “I only know I want to keep going. You have no idea how badly I want to keep going.”

“If it's half as much as I want it, then, yeah, I do have an idea.” She took his hand. “Come on. Lunch break at least.” She led him back to the house.

Elyssa made sandwiches and then sat across from him in the kitchen.

“The last thing I want to do,” she said around a mouthful of ham, lettuce, and provolone, “is derail us before we get to the station. But if I don't do this—if we don't do this—we won't get to the station. So—”

Peter closed his eyes. “So you want to know.”

“Yes.” She was quiet for a time. “We need this, Peter.”

She only called him Peter when she was deeply in earnest. His stomach fluttered, a familiar sensation, the way it did right before combat, before the first shots, before the chaos. He always hoped things would go according to plan, but he knew no plan ever survives first contact intact, because like every other human interaction, combat is a conversation, and the other side has a say.

This isn't combat, he thought, this is love or should be. Elyssa wants to know what changed. What changed me.

He had never wanted to revisit that particular past, but he knew he had to if they were ever to go forward.

Maybe after this, he decided, he would no longer have to go back.

“It's—we were hunting. Seek and destroy mission. We received intelligence about a cell of bomb makers in a village we thought we'd swept clean. My squad was dispatched to find them and take them out. The village looked deserted when we arrived. That should have been our first clue, but we went ahead, house to house. About half an hour into it—the thing is, if they had done nothing, we probably wouldn't have found them. If they'd just laid low, stayed put, we would have gone through and left, and no one would have been hurt. But no, they had to start firing on us. Perfect ambush. That's why the streets were so empty. We should've seen it. Instead, we walked right into it. Fire came in from three sides. We needed cover; we needed a target. I don't know who gave the order, but at one point we directed our fire on one house.”

He closed his eyes again, concentrated on the tightness in his chest and arms. “We popped grenades through the windows and stormed in through the door before the smoke cleared. We needed to get off the street, out of the kill zone. We went in firing at anything that moved. We needed to be safe. Safer. It's just—they were all women
and children.” He looked at her. “You hear about it all the time anymore. Civilian casualties. We heard about it there. We kept telling ourselves we wouldn't do it, that it wouldn't happen on our patrols, but you can't say that. When things break, they break fast, and all you're trying to do is keep you and your buddy alive. You don't think about it. You always know you're hunting the enemy. Then it happens, and all you want to do is take it back. All those broken bodies, all that blood—you can't apologize. It isn't possible, but you want to—to fix it. But you can't.” He shuddered. “So. Now you know.”

“Thank you,” Elyssa said. “I can't—thank you for telling me. I won't ask again.”

He started to stand.

“But,” she said, “how come you had to leave? Chicago, I mean? Why here?”

“I don't—it didn't make sense to me before. But I couldn't stand seeing all those people safe in their homes. It made me feel ugly because I had done what I did, and all these people around me would never know. They'd never have to question their safety, not like that.”

“But aren't they safe because—?”

“Because of what we did? That's what we say, and it's not a lie, but they don't know what it cost. I couldn't stand it.” He shrugged. “Maybe now I can.”

“Because of the work?” She gestured toward the studio. “Because you're helping?” She reached for his hand. “Maybe because making them whole is making you whole.”

“Maybe. I won't know until I know.” He wanted to ask if that was enough for her. He felt he should know that much at least, but asking might disappoint her.

“I think,” she said slowly, a slight tremor in her voice, “you're—we're—”

“Yeah?”

“I can do this now. I can be with you. In everything. Thank you.”

“Maybe I can, too.” He squeezed her hand. “You never quit on me.”

“That's not who we are.” She released his hand. “Finish your sandwich.”

Peter went to their glen regularly to meet with those still reluctant to come in to his studio, but also to see what he could learn about the girl, Dulcie. Dulcie puzzled him. She hung around his studio all the time, coming and going unpredictably. As far as he could tell, she was unscarred. She and Elyssa seemed to have a connection, but Elyssa could not explain why. Dulcie stayed near her. They talked a little, but Elyssa knew almost nothing about her. Paphos, even when asked directly, said nothing.