RUBY LOOKED DOWN AT THE CITY, now tiny and far away. She didn’t know how many floors up she was (sixty? eighty? a hundred?), but the height made her knees feel weak, and she took quick, small breaths. There were no handrails, no walls, nothing separating her from a long, drifting fall that would end in . . . what? A sharp impact? Followed by what, exactly? Yet she couldn’t step back. Curiosity glued her feet to the edge, and she stared out over the distance.
She faced the road that led away from the city, and she had a brief memory of that tiny thread through the dark green forest, small as a strand of DNA. Was it a memory or a dream? The trees waved in a breeze she could not feel, rustling as if they were being stirred from all directions. She knew that was where the nighttime screamers came from. Those woods. Or perhaps somewhere beyond. Above the woods, the sky. It was a deep, deep red, speckled with lighter patches. It made you want to drift away, that sky. It made you want to go to sleep.
Ruby turned and walked to the other side of the building, thirty or forty paces away. She was entranced. She felt suddenly indestructible, as if all that she could see was her domain. She looked over the city, this time in the opposite direction, and again she was overcome to the point of tears. The buildings, small and powerless, were plotted out, city block after city block. The streets were a maze, and they rebounded back on each other, endless squares of concrete and macadam and metal. But she wasn’t looking at the small boxes of buildings; she was looking beyond them.
Water.
A body of water larger than anything she ever could have imagined stretched out in cold, navy blue. The water looked metallic, like mercury. Red light reflected off its breakers, and even though it was the size of an ocean, spreading out to the horizon, it moved like a river, sweeping along the edge of the city. It looked powerful to her with its constant motion and its whitecaps and the way it seemed to push back even the sky at the edge of the world. It stretched as far as she could see to the left and to the right, and Ruby realized the great forest surrounded the city on three sides. The fourth side of the city was lined by water.
Something else caught her attention. The light, the red light of the sky, seemed to emanate from across the water. It almost looked like there was another city Over There, somewhere very far away, and that the light of their own sky was only the residual light from a greater city, a more wondrous sky. She peered Over There, but she could not see far enough.
Everything that Ruby saw expanded her reality. She had heard people speak about the water, heard them whisper about the woods they had walked through to get to the city, but whether or not she had believed the legends, she had certainly never seen anything outside of the ten square city blocks where she lived. Now she was seeing everything. Everything! And everything was so much more beautiful than she could have imagined, and so much more desolate, and so much more heartbreaking. The city was so much smaller than she had imagined. And the water . . .
The water.
Her breathing slowed. She had an indescribable urge to drink it, drink it all. She had a thought that if she could drink the river, she would become even greater than her father. Weightier. Holier? More sacred at least. Perhaps that’s not the exact word, but something like it. Could she be the queen of the city along the river? Could she be the ruler of the city under the red sky?
Instead, she stepped back from the edge. Something had reminded her that she was still young, and something else had reminded her that it is no fault to be young, and she should not race to leave her youth behind. Perhaps the reminder had come from a wisp of her hair as the breeze she had watched caress the trees arrived at the top of the building and dashed playfully around her. Perhaps it was the sudden desire to take off her shoes and lie barefoot on the top of the tall building, staring at the sky in search of the shapes of things. She sighed (with relief?) and turned to find her father.
She saw that it was not only herself and her father on the roof anymore. A group of men had come up through the door and were working on something at the edge of the building, not far from where she stood. It was a cylinder, at least ten feet long, with a huge lens on one side and a small eyepiece on the other.
It was a telescope, and it was aimed across the water.
Someone stood beside her father, and at first Ruby would have described her as a girl her own age, but as Ruby approached them she came to understand that while this person looked like a young girl, she was not, in fact, a young girl. She was something else entirely.
“Hello,” Ruby said hesitantly.
“Ruby, I’d like you to meet someone very important,” her father began. “Someone who will help us make this city exactly what it should be.”
The young girl who Ruby knew was not a young girl stepped forward with something that looked like a smile but was certainly not a smile. Perhaps it was some kind of upturned-at-the-corners grimace.
“Hi,” this something-else-entirely said in a voice attempting to be kind.
Ruby nodded at her but did not immediately reach out her hand to the not-quite-a-girl.
“I’m Beatrice,” the something-else-entirely said in a quiet voice.
Those were some of the only words Ruby would ever hear Beatrice say. Beatrice spent most of her time crowding in close to Ruby’s father, whispering in his ear.
“What is this building?” Ruby interrupted, somehow aware that her father had at some point faced the same questions and desires that she had faced standing there at the edge. The urge to drink the entire ocean. The lust to control everything within view. And she was also aware, somehow, that he had not turned away from that desire, that he had embraced it. That he was embracing it.
Beatrice stood up on her tiptoes and whispered into her father’s ear. He leaned over slightly, nodding a bit.
“Yes, yes. This building,” he said, turning his attention back to Ruby, “is only a symbol of what we can do here. We will rebuild this city, and it will be unlike anything you have ever seen. Anyone has seen. Every building will be this tall. Taller! Every building will reach up to the sky. Do you know why?”
Ruby shook her head. No, she didn’t know why, but for some reason the thought of a city filled with buildings like this terrified her.
Beatrice whispered again.
“Soon,” her father said with a whispered intensity, “we will be high enough to see over the water. Beyond death! We will be able to see beyond death!” He waved his arms and looked at his hands, his own thin hands, as if he could not believe what he was seeing, as if the vision he had presented to Ruby was a vision that still brought him awe.
Ruby looked at him, and a strange sensation rose up in her. She did not know this person. She did not know her father anymore. He was gone, and she wondered when exactly he had wandered off, or where he had drifted to. She wished she could go back to that moment when he’d left and grab his hand, keep him from going. She wondered if that was possible, if a child could keep their parent from wandering down paths that were not good for them.
“What’s that?” Ruby asked, pointing at the telescope.
He sighed. “Ruby, we built this building first and foremost because we wanted to house the Tree, but as it grew, we realized we might be able to build it tall enough to see over the water. Now that we’re here, we realize we need some help. Those men are almost finished building a telescope that will let us see beyond death. We will see what lies beyond the water, and then we will build Over There here. And maybe someday we will even go Over There, and it can be ours as well. Everything will be united and beautiful: the old world, this world, and Over There.”
“Soon,” he began again, but Beatrice tugged on his arm and whispered into his ear, and he nodded. “We need to go, Ruby. Time is short. Everyone is arriving, and it’s time to tell them everything. All of it. They’ve come early because we are out of time. You will have to hear it along with everyone else, and we will begin. A new world.” He shook his head in disbelief at the intense beauty of his own vision.
Beatrice led him away by the hand, to the door that led down the never-ending stairwell Ruby had climbed up only a few minutes before. When Beatrice led him, their hand-holding was not romantic. Not in the least. She held his hand the way a stranger might hold the hand of a naughty child when they are trying to find the child’s parents.
It made Ruby want to cry, but she followed them anyway, because she did not know what else to do.