28

 

As soon as Habidah left Niccoluccio alone, a deep and inexplicably calming sleep claimed him. It was like falling into a well. He was no longer joined with his body. His thoughts turned to dreams.

He felt himself, warm and breathing peacefully, at the end of a long tether. The rest of him drifted into a vacuum so deep that it wasn’t dark. It was a fog of absence, a lack of color or awareness or sight. He had never experienced a dream like this.

Habidah’s image emerged from the nothing, sat beside him. Knowledge came to him suddenly, as though it had been implanted. He said, “You’re not Habidah.”

“I never have been,” she said.

He tried to pull himself up to look at her. The motion was meaningless in this non-space, but he could see her more clearly. “For how long?”

“Sometimes I wonder if you listen at all, or if you only hear what you want to.”

“What?”

“I can show you everything. But first I need your pledge that you will help me.”

“I can’t pledge what I haven’t heard.”

She nodded, flat in aspect. It was difficult to convince himself that this wasn’t her. Every time she spoke, she sounded exactly like Habidah.

She offered her hand. He took it. As if he were being pulled, he felt himself sinking back into his body, lying on the infirmary bed. Whatever drugs and trickery the real Habidah had done to put him asleep were being undone. Habidah said, “Preserve your world, and countless others like it. And you. You’re a worthy man, and no one here has done right by you.”

“Elisa did,” he said, when he was back on his bed. “Habidah did. I haven’t done right by them.”

“They’ll be saved, just like you. In their own time.”

“Am I dead?”

“There’s no such thing as dead. If there were, you should have died long ago.”

He swung his feet off the bed. They still felt distant, half-asleep. Something was wrong. The floor trembled, and dust cascaded from the ceiling. The shaking reminded him of traveling in the black-iron bird, the shuttle.

He couldn’t stop moving. It was as though he were being led. Before he knew what he was doing, he padded toward the doors. They opened on their own. Habidah lay on the other side, eyes half-open. She’d fallen, her knees bent at an awkward angle.

His breath quickened. He stooped beside her and tried to carry her as she had once carried him. His arms gave out. He muttered under his breath. He’d carried heavier bodies. He realized, too late, that he was crying.

“She’ll be herself again, soon enough,” Habidah’s voice said. He couldn’t see her anymore, but he knew she was listening. “She can no more die than you or anyone else.”

The other Habidah, the real Habidah, stared through him. She couldn’t focus. Her mouth opened and closed. Niccoluccio knew pain when he saw it. “Dying is one thing. I don’t want her to suffer.”

After he spoke, Habidah went limp in his hands. The shadow of agony faded from her expression.

“Who are you?” he asked the voice.

“I’m your shepherd.”

He set his hand on Habidah’s cheek. Before more than a few seconds had passed, he felt himself being pulled again.

If he was on a leash, it was a gentle one. He felt nothing physical. But he couldn’t ignore the impulse to stand.

His feet led him down the unearthly hall. The next door opened on its own. An immense light poured out, blinding him. He raised his hand, but the glare crept between his fingers and under his eyelids.

The world around him was shaking as if about to rend itself apart, but he had somehow settled in a pocket of peace. He saw the walls buckling, felt the vibrations in the tips of his toes, but that was all that disturbed him.

“You can still turn back. I’ve been guiding you, not forcing you. If you would willingly take your life in old Florence back, you can still have it.”

Something in the back of Niccoluccio’s mind tickled. She’d asked him this question before.

He took a step into the room, and then another. There was no longer any tether. At first, he looked at the floor, but finally he lifted his eyes to the light and held them there. They seared into his vision, bubbled violet blind spots on top of each other. The damage he was doing to himself didn’t seem to matter. He was falling apart anyway.

And, soon, he was gone.