29
ABRA SLEPT FOR A LONG TIME after her confrontation with Beatrice and the vision she had seen in the clear pool on the rocky plain. She lost track of how long she slept there beside the pools. When she stood up, she was still exhausted, recovering from the near drowning as well as the shock of seeing what she had seen. She stumbled between the craters of water. She refused to look. Of course, she wanted to look, but she knew why Beatrice had brought her there—she could easily spend the rest of her natural life staring into each and every pool, reliving moments until all of the pools that showed her future showed only an old woman staring in pools, reliving the past.
She wandered back into the woods, toward the city, and she slept again, a deep, dreamless sleep.
When Abra woke up the next day, she felt rested. She sat in the trees for a few minutes, gathering her thoughts. She had completely lost track of exactly how long she had been in the city. But it felt like too long—much longer than it should have been. What if Mr. Henry grew tired of waiting? What if Leo and his sister were gone already?
What if she never found the Tree?
Beatrice. Where could Beatrice have gone? In some ways, Abra felt like she was starting from scratch. She glanced through the trees, across the perimeter street, and into the city. The first thing she saw was the tall building. It rose into the sky, brick red and uneven, easily the tallest building. For a few minutes she couldn’t look away. It looked perilous, unsafe, as if it might topple over at any moment. And it was hard to tell for sure from that distance, but something about it besides its tallness made it seem unsteady. It seemed too thin for its height.
For a moment she considered heading directly in, straight for the tall building. Maybe she could find Leo again? But it didn’t feel like the right thing to do. She decided to continue on her original course, around the city’s outskirts.
Abra came out of the woods and yawned, stretched, and started walking. That’s when she heard a faraway sound, something that started out as faint as a bee’s buzzing and grew louder, louder, so that within a few minutes she realized what it was. Some kind of vehicle was approaching.
She jumped into the woods just in time. Three large vehicles careened out of the city and onto the street that lined the forest. They were buses but had been reinforced with a hodgepodge of metal plates so that they looked like homemade military vehicles. They screeched as they turned, gathered speed, and roared past her in the same direction she was traveling. Within a few minutes they were gone, along with their sounds, and the day around her seemed passive and unaware, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
But she had seen them. She knew she had. Three large vehicles with all metal shells and slits for windows.
She walked faster that day and looked over her shoulder a lot. It was during that stretch of walking that she decided she couldn’t trust anyone in the city, and if she saw anyone or anything, she would hide or run.
She walked all day, and in spite of her extra vigilance, she didn’t see anything else. Nothing, that is, until she got to the water. She didn’t see it from very far away because the city street that went along the water was ten or fifteen feet above it, but when she got within a block or two, she heard it. The breakers crashing, the lapping sound it made against the wall. She actually ran the last block, though she wasn’t sure why. It felt like the water was her destination. It felt like the water would give her everything she needed.
Abra stopped with her feet right at the edge of the street and looked out over the water. It was a beautiful deep blue, like navy blue but more somber. She couldn’t see a farther shore, but the water definitely flowed like a river, from her right to her left. Directly to her right, the trees still grew, going right up to the edge of the water so that it would have been hard going if you decided to walk in that direction for any distance.
Abra sat down and let her legs dangle over the wall, and she thought about death, about traveling over that huge ocean or river or whatever it was. She wondered what was on the other side. She wondered what all the Wailers were flying to Over There. Her eyes wandered down the street that now divided the city from the water. That’s when she saw a man, and it looked like he had fallen into the river.
A wind came in off the ocean and drowned her voice as she shouted. She ran to the spot where she had last seen him. The fear she had felt all day about encountering someone else melted away there at the edge of the water. The river looked majestic, yes, but it also looked cold and deep. Very, very deep. And she hadn’t seen any way back up the wall, so that if you fell in there would be nowhere to go but down into the invisible depths.
“Hello?” she shouted. “Are you there? Do you need help?”
She heard him before she saw him. Actually, she heard the boat. It made an uneven thunking sound as the small waves pushed it up against the wall over and over again.
Abra fell to her hands and knees and looked over the edge. Sure enough, there was a man in a boat.
“Here,” he called up to her without even looking. “Take this and fasten it to that hook you’re sitting on.”
Abra glanced down and saw there was a hook beneath her, sticking up out of the street. The man threw a rope ladder up to her, and she found the end of it, lifted it over the small hook. Soon the ropes danced back and forth as the man climbed up out of the boat. He carried a long rope with him and also tied that to the hook, so that the hook was lost under a mass of thick knots.
He looked up at Abra and nodded. He was breathing heavily from his short climb up the rope ladder. “It’s a pleasure,” he said.
“I thought you were drowning!” Abra exclaimed. It came out like an accusation.
The man shrugged. “And what if I had drowned?”
“Well . . . I mean . . . it doesn’t seem safe.”
He stared at her for a second, as if perhaps he had mistaken her for someone else. “You’re standing along the Great Water, the deep darkness that separates the living from the dead . . . and you’re worried about safety?”
She sighed. It did sound silly, if you said it like that.
The man standing in front of her wore one of those plaid Irish flat caps pulled down low so that she could barely see his dark eyes. He had a lot of hair, and it came out from under the hat in curling bursts. He had a short beard too, and wore a thick sweater and tan trousers and brown boots. He looked like he was ready to go for a hike somewhere in the Irish moors.
“Who . . . What . . . Who are you?” Abra asked quietly.
“A right good question,” the man said, taking off his hat and scratching his head before putting his hat back on.
“Do you mean you don’t know who you are?” she asked. “Or do you mean that you can’t tell me?”
“Or both?” the man asked.
“Or both,” Abra said.
“Yes, I suppose it’s both.”
“You don’t know who you are,” Abra said in a disbelieving voice.
He lifted his shoulders and held them there for a moment, as if he couldn’t explain his ignorance.
“What are you doing here?” Abra asked. She didn’t realize how much she had missed talking to another human being until she had one standing right in front of her.
“I’m waiting,” the man said.
“Waiting?”
He nodded and sat down as Abra had, his legs dangling over the wall. He looked out over the water, and this time he took his hat off for good and put it under his leg. He patted the space beside him. Abra sat down.
“What are you waiting for?” Abra asked.
“I guess I’m waiting to find out who I am, or what I’m for.”
“You don’t know who you are?” she asked again.
“Well, I know my name, if that’s what you mean, but knowing a name doesn’t mean you know who someone is.”
“Well said. My name is Mallory.”
“I’m Abra.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You know?” This man was getting more and more confusing as the minutes passed. “You know who I am but you don’t know who you are?”
“Everyone knows who you are,” he said, scoffing.
“You know about the Tree?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, his voice suddenly heavy. “Yes, I do.”