25.
Through the corridors of sleep
Past the shadows dark and deep
My mind dances and leaps in confusion.
I don't know what is real,
I can't touch what I feel
And I hide behind the shield of my illusion.
So I'll continue to continue to pretend The mirror on my wall So I'll continue to continue to pretend It's no matter if you're born
My life will never end,
And flowers never bend
With the rainfall.
Casts an image dark and small
But I'm not sure at all it's my reflection.
I am blinded by the light
Of God and truth and right
And I wander in the night without direction.
My life will never end,
And flowers never bend
With the rainfall.
To play the king or pawn
For the line is thinly drawn 'tween joy and sorrow,
So my fantasy
Becomes reality,
And I must be what I must be and face tomorrow.
So I'll continue to continue to pretend
My life will never end,
And flowers never bend
With the rainfall.
- Simon and Garfunkel, "Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall"
Grief took me in weird ways on that trip.
It wasn't so bad during the day. I took Hana's advice and kept mostly to the trees, though I made sure to keep the road within sight. I didn't want to get lost.
Whenever I had a clear enough path, I ran. It felt good to run again, and the exertion kept me focused on nothing more complicated than my next stride - and the aches and pains of running again after what felt like months away from it.
After the first day, I woke up the following morning feeling like someone had cracked both of my shins and replaced the muscles in my thighs with barbed wire.
Perversely, I welcomed the pain. At least it gave me something else to think about.
Besides, I'd earned it, the way I'd let down everyone I'd ever cared about.
Sasha had counted on me to keep her safe, and far from protecting her, I'd left her alone so that some lunatic could break in and kill her - just to get to me. No doubt my failures had contributed to Dad's final heart attack, too - hell, maybe I'd even helped with the first one. From high school on, I'd given up on studying as too damned boring, and I'd devoted myself instead to getting drunk, coked out, strung out, and laid, preferably all at once - and when I wasn't doing that, I was naively trying to get myself killed in all sorts of war-torn, godforsaken locales. Even after I'd cleaned myself up a little, I'd still acted like I'd been set on a self-destruct course and was going to take the family name down with me, so was it any wonder dad had been so stressed out?
And now there was Harry to add to the tally...
A shudder ran through my muscles, and I opened my stride, running so hard that you would've thought the devil himself was at my heels.
When I couldn't run any further – or if the terrain turned rough enough that I ran the risk of twisting my ankle if I pushed my luck too far – I walked, and even then I was so busy watching for other travelers and jumping at shadows that I didn't have much time to think then, either.
Thoughts kept popping up when I wasn't paying attention, though.
I'd notice the weight of Harry's quarterstaff in my hand, after hours of ignoring it, and the sudden feeling of hollow agony would be so heavy that I'd come to a stop, feeling like I'd just run smack into a wall. Ironically, it was at those times when his quarterstaff was often the only thing that kept me on my feet.
Other times, I'd look at the pristine blue of the sky, and at the cobblestoned road with bright green grass growing up from the cracks between the stones. I'd look at the strange people who passed me by, and I'd inhale the sweet summer air, and I'd wish that dad could be here to see it, because even though I didn't want to be in this place, it really was beautiful and strange and fascinating, and I thought he might have liked to see it. He'd always liked the country.
Then I'd remember that, if this was real, that meant that dad was really gone, too, and that hit me like a ton of bricks.
Over and over again, I forgot that they were gone.
And then, over and over again, I remembered.
The tears came on often and suddenly, as if I'd just opened a spigot. There were a few occasions when I had to stop and lean against a tree until the moment had passed, because I couldn't see where I was going through the blurring in my eyes.
Other times, I stopped if I saw a plant that I thought I recognized. Automatically, I would turn to Harry to ask him a question, or to point my find out to him so that he would give me a smiling thumbs-up for a job well done.
Then I remembered that he wasn't there anymore, and that he never would be again, and I'd uproot the shrub or tear its branches off and hurl it into the trees with a banshee-like scream of rage.
Then, after the fit had passed, I'd feel guilty. It wasn't as if the plant had anything to do with my problems, after all. It was just a plant.
I tried to collect the poor things and stick them back into their holes. I patted the earth down around their roots in mute apology, though I wasn't sure why I was apologizing to a plant. Still, it calmed me down a little, though I'd never had much of a green thumb and I didn't know if the plants would even survive the consequences of my little tantrums.
I was glad that I was alone for the most part, at least. It would have been humiliating if anyone had seen me acting the way I acted sometimes along that road, whenever the grief took me.
But, all in all, the days weren't so bad.
It was the nights that killed me.
I was used to being surrounded by people, always. Even in the quiet of my apartment, I'd been aware that there were millions of souls all around me, every one humming along the city's veins and powering its massive heart. It had been weirdly comforting to know that, even if there was no one right there with me, I was never really alone.
But, on this alien road, when the stream of travelers had dried to a trickle and then stopped with the setting of the sun, I sometimes felt like I was the only person alive in the whole world.
Maybe that should have been reassuring – I was a woman alone and didn't really have any way to defend me except with Harry's quarterstaff, which I wasn't even very good at using. I was probably safer if no one was around to see me.
Mostly, though, I was just unbearably lonely.
I often found myself sitting up until dawn, staring off into the shadows until my vision swam with exhaustion. I counted backwards from some insanely high numbers, just to distract myself. Sometimes it worked. Mostly it didn't. My thoughts spun and buzzed in my head, refusing to shut down long enough to let me catch more than what felt like a few winks of sleep.
I missed dad so much. It was strange, but somehow the unfamiliarity of the place made it feel like he was even further away from me.
It was absurd. He was gone don't say dead, I hate that word, don't even think it and it didn't matter how far away I was. Whether ten miles or ten million, it was all the same. I could be sitting right next to him, and it still wouldn't bring him any nearer to me.
I found myself missing Harry's unflappable calm. It had been like a balm to my not-so-unflappable temper. I needed it, but I couldn't have it. It was gone, too, no thanks to me.
I'd been so jealous of him. I'd been proud. I'd been humbled. I wished he was still around, so that I could keep trying to learn how he did what he did. Now I'd never even get the chance.
I tried to practice with the quarterstaff, to do some of the poses he'd taught me, but my heart wasn't in it. It just brought back memories I didn't want to have to think about.
I ate whenever my legs weakened, or when I started to feel faint. I didn't have much of an appetite, but I gnawed on a piece of jerky until my energy came back. I wanted to collapse even less than I wanted to eat.
What I really wanted was a drink, but I didn't have any, and I didn't find any place along the road that sold what I wanted. Believe me, I looked.
It wasn't the jerky that kept me going through the long nights and the grief, though.
It was the anger.
The cloaked man was the key to everything.
The cloaked man knew something. He'd done something to me. I didn't know what, and I didn't know how, but I knew that I wanted to get out of this place and get my life back, and he was the key to this whole miserable mess.
I was going to find him. And then he was going to fix everything that he'd broken. Somehow.
Days passed, one by one. I ran more, slept less, ate little, and I kept a running count of the days in my head. Inside, I seethed with a boiling black rage.
On the twelfth night, I dreamed.