“You were having a nightmare,” Jeremy said. “You woke me up.”
“You whacked me in bed with your plaster club,” Ryan said, glancing over the seat. “Humor me, Jeremy. This is a long trip. Now of all times.”
That hurt so much, Jeremy thought it was unfair. “I’m listening, aren’t I?”
“We’re not going to have too many of these days, you know, so I thought I’d impart a little of what it means to be your dad, a little fatherly wisdom, however cracked.”
Jeremy did not know whether his father was feeling self-pity or expelling a lousy joke. (Ryan always called telling a bad joke “expelling,” like coughing out a piece of food or a gob of phlegm stuck in the wind-pipe: “You try to tell a joke and it makes you choke, but stop! Don’t expel it. Wrong joke or wrong crowd.”)
“Impart away,” Jeremy said, preparing to suffer in relative silence, because Ryan was dying, he was pretty sure of that, though of course nobody would tell him anything right up front.
“All right.” Ryan thought for a moment, frowning in concentration. “These suits keep them alive and together in a dark, nasty land where there are no rules. But the people with little ears—me, my friends—we’re going out there, into the weirdness, and these superior people—the tall fellows—are suiting us up. They won’t go themselves. Maybe they can’t, but we can, the little ones. Weird, huh?”
“Totally,” Jeremy said. “I never have dreams like that.”
“When things change, dreams change. I used to have normal dreams. What do you dream about?”
“Roads. Toads and roads.” Jeremy had worked out a pretty funny routine about toads crossing a road, grim and hilarious. “I want to dream about Mom.”
“Right.”
Ryan drove for a while without saying anything.
My father is fat. He wants to be a comedian. That’s what he had told Miriam Sangloss in the clinic.
Jeremy’s father had thin red hair and a round red face and the body of a carny roustabout—big muscles, big bones, boiled-freckle skin, Mom had called it, that memorable time when she painted Ryan up in flower and beast tattoos for a street parade in Waukegan. She was acting in a film then, a real paying job, and they stayed over for a few weeks after the end of the shoot, doing local theater and of course that parade, which had been fun.
Jeremy had been eleven. On his fingers, he counted the days after the parade, the days before she died. Four.
The Dodge had taken Ryan and Jeremy through Montana and Idaho and into Oregon. They had stopped off in Eugene, where Ryan had worked a small circus whose owner was once Mom’s boyfriend. Ryan and the circus owner spent one night drinking and crying on each other’s shoulders—very weird, Jeremy had thought.
They left Eugene for Spokane, crossing the eastern high desert. Their last trip.
“We all lose our mothers,” Ryan said on that trip. “Every mother since the beginning of time has died. Memory is the mother of us all, Jeremy.”
And now—Nunc—he was sitting in the chair.
Everything signifies, nothing is of itself. You call yourself Jack because it is a safe name. So many are named Jack, you can hide; but it is a strong name, universal.
The odd thing, as if there had ever been just one singular, odd thing in his life, was that sitting in this room, he had no difficulty believing that road trip with his father was his very first memory, his first experience of being alive. What went before—his mother’s death, the beginning of the trip, breaking his leg—was like the sound of the dying city outside this high, empty room: there, but unconvincing.
There is a number, assigned to volumes arranged on a nonexistent shelf in a time far away from now, all waiting to be reconciled. Waiting for choices to be made. Where do you really come from, Jeremy?
Who is your real mother?
And why does she seek you?
Ginny closed her eyes. She was back in Milwaukee, then in Philadelphia. She was back with her parents.
They rarely stayed in one place more than a few months. And when they moved on, they arranged things so they left behind no impression—nobody remembered them. They could have circled back through the same towns, moved back into the same houses a few years later, and would have been greeted as newcomers. But they never did.
“We don’t leave footprints,” her mother had told Ginny as a child.
Ginny remembered her attempts to make friends, meet boys. But then, inevitably—exhausted, discouraged—her family stayed too long in one town and the whole memory thing doubled back on them. Her mother wandered off or just vanished, as if erased from a giant blackboard. A few weeks later, her father vanished as well. Maybe they were taken by collectors, like the man with the coin or Glaucous. Maybe her parents sacrificed themselves to protect her. She would never know. Her entire family might as well have never lived. There was no proof they had lived, other than the library stone.
Alone, carrying the sum-runner, her dreams began—and she learned she could shift.
She had come so very far. Her entire life became a long bad dream; both of her lives, here and there. It was curiosity about there that landed her in her present trouble.
A few weeks after her father’s departure, Ginny boarded a Greyhound and stared out a smudged window at rolling wet miles of fields and hills. In Philadelphia, she lived on the streets for a few months. Street people forgot things under the best of circumstances. She decided that wasn’t what she needed.
She soon hitchhiked to Baltimore, where she peeled a tab off a flyer on a bulletin board, and that same night carried her backpack into an old two-bedroom row house occupied by goths and ravers—determined to settle in, stay awhile, leave behind some footprints. For the first time since her parents had vanished, she felt comfortable, at home—for a while.
Then she left the house in Baltimore and called the number in the newspaper ad.
Ginny looked up at the blank wall, the peeling paint, the shadows moving slowly over the overlapping slats of wood.
Is this what you choose?
Is there a better past for you?
“Who are you?” she cried.
No answer. Foolish question. She already knew the answer—though it did not make much sense.
“What am I, then? I really don’t remember anything before I called that number—is that it? Who were my parents? I couldn’t just pop up out of nowhere, out of nothing, could I?”
A polite waiting.
“All right,” Ginny said, angrily determined to test the limits. “You asked for it, here it is. I come from a country called Thule. It’s a big island northwest of Ireland. The last contact with the outside world was…World War Two. The Germans occupied my island, but we pushed them out before the war ended. There were huge stone castles built on the crests of high hills and in the mountains. My parents worked in the royal palace on the southern coast, and I had the run of the hill-castles where the prince and princess were hidden, moving to a new castle every day. Everyone was afraid, but not my family. My brothers and I—I had three brothers—we used to ride gliders off the cliffs, and I broke my arm…”
Someone laughed—behind her, around her—delighted with her presumption. Her arm suddenly ached, and with this pain, all the memories flooded back: broad fields below the stone castles, brown and purple with sweet prickle-thatch, the taste of comb-laden honey-of-Thrace in the fresh spring air; her father’s concern as the palace physician set her arm without anesthetic, wrapped it in a poultice of lard and chalice-herb, then in a temporary wax-soaked cast stiffened with clean white pine slats…
She had been named after the Virgin Queen, who once offered the hand of alliance to Thule to seek their aid in fighting off Spain. That alliance had soured in the days of James the First.
Ginny grinned—free to choose. She could actually feel that lovely, brightly plumed tail of history and memory stretching behind her, a thrashing, vibrant past filling out and coming alive, smells and colors and tastes struggling to be made and fixed in pla
ce.
It was real—not just her imagination!
“Oh, my God,” she said, and her voice echoed from the walls. “It is true, isn’t it?” She felt a lightness and liberty she had never known before. It made her giddy. She was shifting fates, in reverse.
And then a gentle remonstrance enveloped her.
Wonderful it is—a beautiful stretch—but too far from where we are now. It cannot be reconciled.
Not yet.
After…
That beautiful history faded as quickly as it had come, but the taste of honey-of-Thrace lingered on her tongue like a reward for her audacity.
“You’re real, aren’t you?” she whispered. “You’re real and you’re beautiful. But you’re sick…you’re dying, because the universe is sick and dying, right?”
No answer.
“But is it true—can I have another past? A better, happier past?”
No answer needed. Ginny felt for the box in her pocket. “When was I really born?” she asked, suddenly catching on.
“I’ve been here a long time,” Daniel said to the looming silence. “Thousands of years. Millions. I don’t remember all of it, of course, but that’s what I’ve figured out. And I’m talking here just to pass the time, because this is all crap. In fact, I only remember a little bit about what happened before I took over Charles Granger. That’s the problem—the things I’ve had to do to escape the bad places, the dying places—one big leap at a time. And now there’s only one path, one escape.” He sliced the air with his hand, then jabbed. “Go straight through Terminus, come out the other side, whatever that’s like. So—who’s going through, and who’s going to get stuck here? Maybe you don’t know, because that’s not your job. But if anybody’s going through, I’m your ticket, hitch a ride.” The silence seemed to become deeper. “Are you the Chalk Princess?”
Daniel felt acutely uncomfortable. There was something in the room—it just wasn’t responding. So sad. He just couldn’t remember something important—something essential.
“I mean, this is my audition, isn’t it? The others—they say they dream about another city. I don’t. So why were those monsters so interested in me—the Moth, Whitlow, Glaucous—whatever he is. What have I got to give them? The stone? I don’t even remember how it came to be mine. I think I killed somebody to get it. That’s how it always comes to be mine. Somebody has to die.”
He had stopped breathing for a moment, so he took a short breath, all he would allow himself, even if his head was starting to swim.
“I’m a madness that moves from man to man. I’ve betrayed and lied and ruined and been ruined, but I’ve always escaped. What does that make me?” He closed his eyes. Suddenly, his head hurt with so much longing and need.
“We’re not going to find each other anytime soon, are we?” Daniel whispered to the stillness.
Paramedics were called to the motel after Jeremy found his father sprawled on the floor of the bathroom. Something small had burst in Ryan’s head, paralyzing him and slurring his speech.
Ryan never again mentioned the Bleak Warden. In the hospital room, the last thing he told Jeremy was, “Save your mother. Always remember.” No explanation.
Jack was making his choice—stubborn, as always. He’d loved his parents—had wanted to be very like his father.
Three days later another stroke killed Ryan. His father was gone. It was one thing to gull the shills, fool the audience—entertain them with the brightness of the game. It was another to build his life on a firm, wonderful foundation of memories both good and bad—life solid, painful, but real.
Jeremy had his cast removed just in time for the funeral. Magicians, comedians, buskers, and actors came from all over Washington and parts of Oregon and Idaho. He had never realized his father was so loved—which only showed how little he knew about anything important.
Before vacating the room in the Motel 6, he opened his father’s trunk. Inside he found a stack of paperback books, mostly Clive Barker and Jack Kerouac (that was when he decided his new name would be Jack), three changes of clothes and five changes of underwear, none of which fit him—and the gray box, wrapped in a velvet bag. He opened the box and found the twisted stone, burned-looking but for a small, embedded red eye that seemed to shine even in the dark.
The sometime stone.
The sum-runner.
Ryan had never told him where he’d found it. Perhaps it had belonged to Mother.
Jack’s luck changed. It did not get better, exactly—not in the larger scale of things—but it changed.
“I’d like to be—to have been a little girl with friends and a good school, good teachers, a normal little girl. I’d like to grow up normal and fall in love—without dreams. Are Jack and I supposed to be in love? Because it doesn’t seem to be happening—not yet.”
Outside, the sky grew brighter. Yellow and green light flickered through the high window, but Jack could not tell if dawn was coming. It didn’t matter. No more dawns, probably. He did not need to get up and move around—he was comfortable, for the moment.
“How long should I wait?”
Now the window spread a diffuse silver glow on the wall opposite.
Still nothing. Then:
What is your other first memory?
Jeremy was stunned by how quickly he came up with his reply. “Something’s carrying me. I’m young, I don’t know too many words. A door opens—but it’s an odd sort of door, it melts aside. And then—there’s my mother and father, but that’s not what they’re called—still, they’re like my parents. They love me. They take care of me. They’re going to be taken away from me.”
He made a bitter face, crossed his legs, and tried to lean back, but the chair creaked, so he bit at his index finger. What he had just said made no sense, but it felt right, felt real.
“That’s what you asked for. My other first memory. I remember being young. And yet here, now, I don’t remember being young. I’m less real here than in my dreams…That’s not right. This is wacked. Take my word for it, this is triple wacked.”
Jeremy looked around, suddenly very frightened—more frightened than he’d been in the sack in the back of the van, or sprawled out bruised and wet on the transformed street, his hand sluiced by the storm’s cold runoff.
“You’re supposed to be Mnemosyne, right?”
A breeze blew through the room, cool but not unfriendly, pulling at his shirt, flicking his pants legs. Playful, sad. He blinked and shifted on the chair, then just listened. A quiet rushing hiss came from outside, more like falling sand than wind—and nothing else. Falling sand or endless quick, tiny waves on a beach. The room was dark. No dawn through the high window. Jeremy—no, he was Jack again—had no idea how much time had passed.
He looked over his shoulder. “Hello?”
The lone high window was more pit than window—he couldn’t even see the frame or much of the wall. The room seemed much colder. “Everything I know is wrong.” Jack smiled, crossed his arms. “I get it. I’m ready.”
He would not just get up and leave the room. That would show them he was a coward, that he couldn’t take their stupid test, which didn’t mean anything anyway.
Hours later, “I jump away from bad things. Everybody would if they could.”
Whom do you protect—and whom do you leave behind? Where do you go when you jump—into another you? How many of you are there?
Jack broke into a sweat. “I don’t know.” He wiped his forehead, then his cheeks. Someone, somewhere, had to be talking quietly through a hole or a speaker. Time to get real. He was willing to give up the illusion that he could jump—that had always seemed crazy—as well as the memory of the dark, crumbling world and what lay beyond the membrane—give it all up, no problem—forget about Glaucous and the huge woman and the wasps—fine by him. Forget about the frozen stuttering city outside the warehouse and the ladies and even Ellen and Dr. Sangloss and Bidewell. He’d dump it all—well, maybe not Ginny. But just don’t ask those questio
ns, because he had wondered about the answers for years. How many selves had he betrayed, just by avoiding their pain, by jumping to better, safer lines?
“I can’t be all of us at once.” He tried to laugh. “My head will explode!”
Maybe he was remembering the wrong things. Maybe he had never escaped from the back of the van. Everything between now and then could be a lie, an illusion. Glaucous was torturing him—they were holding him here by spinning out their wasp-winged fates—maybe that was the rushing sound and this tall, narrow room was surrounded by wasps, blacking out the lone window. Who could possibly know?
Jack tried to laugh again but only made a sound like crackling paper.
But admitting that Glaucous was real was admitting as well that Jeremy Rohmer—Jack Rohmer—was special, had special talents, dreamed special dreams. Glaucous was no more a sufficient explanation of where he was, of what he was being asked to do, than Bidewell or Mnemosyne—whatever she or it might be. Maybe they were all the same. Madness needed no sequence, no rules.
They had not remembered him at the Busker Jam—not even Joe-Jim had remembered Jack at first. That blank look—and then the click of memory.
“You reconciled me, didn’t you?”
Jack was really sweating.
“When was I made? Really.”
What is your earliest memory?
The waterfront, cranes looming, the last light of day falling like burning gold between the gray warehouses—not much different from Bidewell’s warehouse, though not as old. He saw a bumpy asphalt road overlying bricks and patched with gravel and concrete, broken up by bands of light—light, shadow, light, shadow, warming and cooling his face as he rode on his bike. And still, in his pocket, next to the stone…
Jack pulled out the origami puzzle, let his fingers work around the edges, poke through a cupped fold, pull at a tab he had not noticed before.