The closest thing she can compare it to is getting suddenly pulled out of an icy pond in which one is drowning. The panic lingers even though it's no longer warranted. She keeps trying to breathe.
Don't be afraid, someone says, or would if one could talk without having a voice. Or does it say: Fear not? Or something else, in a language that she has never heard? Nevertheless, she understands it. And she is not afraid.
How strange! She is still in her room, and can watch the bustle below, but she can't quite pinpoint the reason for all the suffering. Poor Tom... poor Mama, she says, without saying it; without really feeling it, either. Pity is a corporeal emotion, and of course she is no longer subject to that.
One day, they will be where you are, someone says. They will know what you know. If it sounded like anything, it would be the voice in her head that always narrated her thoughts. But she's fairly certain it's not issuing from her.
Then it's all right, she says, not really expecting an answer. Of course it is.
She notices something curious: her view of the room seems to be sliding into multitudes of scenes, like reflections from a prism with an infinite number of sides. Despite their number, she has no difficulty dividing her attention between them.
What's happening? She asks.
Everything, someone says.
A woman wrapped in a dressing gown sits straight-backed in a chair set at an almost formal distance from the bed. The shell of a younger woman lies there; its brokenhearted mother tells it not to worry, not knowing that worry is impossible, unnecessary. Of course they'll be looked after.
A dark-suited, stoop-shouldered man stands in the corner. Two women, one with raven and one with golden hair, hesitantly embrace. They kiss their sister's shell on the forehead and withdraw; the stoop-shouldered man approaches, crying.
Black birds wheel in the bright blue sky above a churchyard; black thoughts circle in the heads of the people gathered below them. Ropes creak with the weight of the casket being lowered into the ground.
Are these the shadows of things that will be? she asks, knowing that it doesn't really matter. Even the words she uses are borrowed.
Who can tell? Someone answers.
Brown birds wheel in the hazy sky above a cricket pitch. The crack of ball on bat echoes through the fragrant air; a sandy-haired man with lines etched on his forehead and around his mouth runs between the creases one, two, three times. His brother-in-law claps him on the back and he grins, a smile that reaches his eyes.
Clouds threaten darkly outside the high windows, but the inside of the house is a blaze of electric light. A small girl with nut-brown curls and electric blue eyes runs laughing through the gallery and clatters down the stairs to where her current heart's desire waits under the elaborate tree. The adults in the room watch her open her gifts, remembering other Christmases, with smiles that are happy and sad all at once.
Dust motes glow in the golden light falling through dirty windows into a garage. A skinny girl with full lips leans over an open car bonnet with her father, watching his work raptly. He speaks quietly. She fetches a wrench, and he motions for her to loosen that bolt.
A young woman in a dun-colored uniform drives a converted Morris with more speed than is perhaps quite safe, considering the dusk and the covered headlights. Her passenger chews gum and flirts with her, pronouncing his "A"s and "R"s in a way that she likes listening to. Hearing a telltale buzz, they raise their eyes and their faces darken. The explosion blooms in the darkness three hundred yards ahead of them; the woman brakes hard and brings the car to a lurching halt. Her white teeth flash through her red lipstick in the firelight as she smiles at the officer next to her.
A gray-haired man wearing a fedora walks down a glass-and-concrete canyon of a street. The blue of his undimmed eyes echoes the color of the sky arching over the tall buildings, and is echoed in the eyes of the small boy holding his hand. The boy's piping inquiries alternate with the man's lower-pitched answers, delivered in a slightly blurred brogue, floating over the hatted heads of the crowd that flows around them.
Black birds wheel in the bright blue sky above a churchyard. A man and woman, one getting stooped and white-headed, the other with threads of gray in her brown hair, stand before a headstone. She offers her arm. He leans on it. She looks across the yard at the church and says nothing, but hands him a handkerchief.
The windows are black, and the coldly lit room is empty except for a wizened body lying surrounded by tubes and beeping machines. It makes a meager bulge in its narrow bed. Its sparse hair is cottony; its eyes are rheumy now, half-opened but unseeing. The body draws a labored breath, then another. Then it is still.
Will we be together then? Sybil asks. Even as she does, she realizes they always have been together; they always will be. A great sense of relief fills her.
Time to go, says the voice that is not a voice, that is her and not her.
She goes.