––––––––
“Here we are, home again,” says Beatrice, slipping the ancient, rusty key into the lock. “What would you like to do? Do you want a little tea?”
“No, no more tea, thank you.”
We haven’t stopped drinking tea all day. I ought to be sick of it, but to tell the truth, what we’ve drunk so far hasn’t made me feel at all restless. It hasn’t had much flavor, either.
“Doesn’t drinking all that tea make you antsy? I mean, doesn’t it keep you from sleeping?”
“Sleep? Why, I don’t get sleepy, dear! The Creator didn’t think that was appropriate for me.”
“But you must sleep some time, right?” Beatrice shrugs with surprising elegance. I can’t believe she stays up all night. “You never sleep?”
“Never.”
“But—why?”
There are still a lot of things I don’t understand about these people.
“It’s not part of my role.”
“So why do you have a bed?”
“I don’t know,” she answers with a smile, “you would have to ask the Creator. He put it there. Now, what would you like to do until morning?”
I can see that my plan to escape while Beatrice is sleeping is going to get a little tricky.
“We could rest in the living room for a bit.”
“All right.”
Beatrice’s sofa isn’t the most comfortable one I’ve ever sat on, but at least there are some nice big cushions. I make myself a little nest.
“So, I’ve noticed that Morgan isn’t too fond of Heathcliff.”
Beatrice loses her customary joy whenever she hears the name of her beloved.
“No one is, I’m afraid.”
“Why not?”
“They do not know how to see inside him. Heathcliff has a pure and sensitive soul, but a lack of love has hardened it. He lives in Wuthering Heights, a house up on a hill, far from the other inhabitants of the Sphere. It is an inhospitable place, battered by unusually cruel winds. Anyone would go mad living up there, and if you had to share your days with Cathy, too... well.”
“What?” I ask, my curiosity prickling. “What happens if you have to share your days with Cathy?”
Beatrice tries to resist—the Creator doesn’t like her to gossip, much less to speak ill of any Spherean. But what she has to say about Cathy isn’t gossip, just a description of reality. After some hemming and hawing, she describes living conditions that would turn even the most sociable person into a recluse. She says Heathcliff would be very different if his surroundings weren’t so hostile.
“The Sphereans have always rejected him, as if he were no good for anyone or anything. And the one who rejects and mocks him the most is Cathy, the one person he loves above all others. She treats him with scorn and torments him with jealousy just for her own amusement. She is to blame for his miserable state, though she is hardly the only one. Heathcliff does not have one single friend. You’ve already heard the way Morgan spoke of him. Everyone is prejudiced when it comes to Heathcliff.”
I nod.
“And what does he do about it?”
“Nothing. He lives his life without interfering with anyone else.”
That isn’t what Morgan told me, but I know all too well what it’s like to feel misunderstood, to live surrounded by people who are different, to be different. For the first time I wonder how other people see me. Do they think I’m sullen and hard to get close to? I suppose most of them do. All of them except Axel—he was my Beatrice. Suddenly I feel the rage that consumes me whenever I think about my life as something that happened in the past. I try to set it aside and stop thinking about it.
“So why don’t you ask your creator to change things? Didn’t you say that everything in the Sphere was up to him?”
“I would never ask something like that of him! The Creator has his reasons for all that he does. Though that is not to say that Heathcliff’s situation is not deeply painful to me. We have a certain amount of freedom within our roles, so the Sphereans are not obligated to treat Heathcliff the way they do. They should have better judgment. I would never want to speak ill of anyone, but there are many people who could have the finger pointed at them, and who are very popular nonetheless. Dorian Gray, for example. His portrait is an open secret; everyone knows the pleasure he gets from being cruel to others. Yet instead of judging him for it, everyone in the Sphere seems to applaud his mischief as if it were some kind of heroic feat. They love him; there’s not a single social event to which he is not invited.”
“Well, not everyone adores him,” I point out. “Someone hit him so hard he might’ve been killed.”
Beatrice smiles, amused. “What do you mean, killed!”
“He never regained consciousness while you were looking after him, did he?” Beatrice shakes her head, apparently unworried. “His life could still be in danger. Do you know if he came to when you brought him to the hospital?”
“Of course he didn’t.”
“Of course?”
I don’t know what to make of that answer. Beatrice seems totally unconcerned for Mister Gray’s health.
“He will not regain consciousness, my dear.”
I don’t know why hearing that affects me so deeply. My blood goes cold and I sit there, paralyzed. It feels like I’m watching from the outside as they talk about me.
“You mean he’s... dead?”
“No, of course not,” Beatrice lets out a gentle laugh. “But he will not regain consciousness until we get the painting back. Dorian is a double being; one part cannot fully exist without the other. He is like the doctor—he cannot exist fully without Hyde. They are two, but really they are a single being. I know it’s complicated, but that is the beauty of creation.” Beatrice’s face lights up. “Doubles are always dark, always evil and at the same time fascinating. They are the method the Creator uses to show us his chiaroscuro, the contrast of light and shadow in his Creation.”
“The monk that ran away when he saw Sherlock...”
“Ambrosio.”
“Right, Ambrosio. I guess he’s a double. Is he dark and fascinating, too?”
Beatrice’s expression is a mix of revulsion and shame. “Ambrosio is not in the least fascinating. He is one of the worst that the Sphere has to offer, merely a collection of depravities.”
“So he might be capable of killing...”
I feel triumphant—perhaps I have an ally in Beatrice after all.
“Of course! He kills perfectly, meticulously. You know, it does make me a little uncomfortable to talk about such things, although they are part of Creation. But I trust that you have been sent in answer to my pleas, so I shall try to help you in any way I can. Ambrosio is one of the Sphereans who kills the most often. In fact, he murders women from the Sphere every day, without exception.”
“Every day!” I jump to my feet, horrified. My breath is coming in gasps. We’ve got to go back to the monastery.
“Yes, every day.” Beatrice has lost none of her usual serenity. “He is only following his role.”
I can’t calm down. I’m too shocked. How can they take something like this so lightly?
“But... you all know and you don’t do anything? Since when? I don’t even want to think how many girls he’s killed already.”
Beatrice looks at me, confused.
“He murders the same ones as always. I don’t understand the problem. I certainly don’t like it, but it is nothing out of the ordinary.”
I try to understand. The monk kills the same women over and over again. I think back to what they said about the places where the missing people usually commit suicide, and a terrible doubt begins to choke me. It feels like a huge ball of hair is stuck in my throat. Where am I? When I picture Mister Gray’s face I can’t say whether he was alive or dead. I’m just feeling my way forward here—there’s no way to be certain—but I think I might be in the world of the dead. There is no other explanation.
“Bice, can I ask you something?” I sit down slowly, with one leg folded beneath me. Beatrice nods gently. “How can you know for sure that someone isn’t dead?” My voice shakes.
I don’t dare point out that everyone here is made of wood and has no eyes. That their world is worn-out and colorless. There are no smells, no flavors. They don’t sleep. Wounds only last for a few seconds. The same thought that struck me when I first came to this bleak place starts hammering inside me again, but I refuse to accept it. No. I simply cannot be dead. And Carl? Why haven’t I run into him here? Maybe he was the one who survived.
All of a sudden I stand up and start screaming. I barely even notice when Beatrice embraces me and tries to soothe me. I scream until my throat aches. It isn’t crying—I don’t feel any sadness about what happened—just sheer helplessness.
“I don’t know how I can help you.”
I can hear Beatrice’s words but I can barely make sense of them. The pain ripping through me makes it feel like I’m coming apart, disintegrating, like acid is burning away my body. I feel dizzy. The living room starts to spin. I run over and throw the windows open so violently that it drives the wooden shutters into the walls. I watch, astonished, as the holes in the plaster fill back up. I grab one of the shutters and smash it as hard as I can, but I only see the same sad thing again: the holes only last for half a second. I clutch at my head. I want to tear out the thought that’s tormenting me, to get rid of all the proof.
“Eurydice...”
“Leave me alone! Let me go!”
“Please. You must calm yourself. You have been sent...”
“I haven’t been sent. I’m not your savior. I’m nothing—I’m nobody. Let me go!”
With a howl I run out of the living room and down the stairs, slipping, stumbling, crashing into the stone walls. Outside I find the grayish, leaden colors of the gardens of St Mary.
“I hate you all!” I shout from the bottom of my heart, without even knowing who I’m shouting at. “I hate you!” I scream in vain at the gray sky. The weight of its color feels like it might crush me.
They won’t get me. That is the only clear thought I can find inside myself. Whatever is left of me has turned into pure rebellion. They won’t get me. No one, not this ridiculous bubble, not whatever force sent me here. Death—if that’s what it is—isn’t going to get me. I still had so many things to do. It wasn’t time yet. I run toward the beach at East Sands, barely able to make out the path in the darkness. By the time I reach the hill I’m moving so fast that I trip and tumble the rest of the way down. When I finally stop rolling, I’m lying face down on the wet sand. The sea creeps up to me and licks my fingers like some enormous dopey dog. I sit up and look at its charcoal color, the grayish foam that comes and goes, shining a little under the light of a cardboard moon. The sight fills me with hate. My body is begging me to cry, but I won’t give in. I get my breathing under control. I’m not going to cry. I simply will not accept death. As the water laps at my knees, I dig my fists into the hardened sand until they’re full of all the sand they can hold. I look down. I hate that leaden, dusty color so much. I fling handfuls of sand furiously into the sea, this sea that’s nothing but a terrible copy of the sea at St Andrews... of my sea.
“Go back to how you were before!” I shout, but my command tumbles into a bottomless void. “This is my beach, my beach! Where I live my life. Got it? For good or bad, better or worse... I had a life. I had a life!”
I think of Axel. I think of the way we left things at the party—I didn’t even say goodbye. I can’t be dead. I have unfinished business. When I close my eyes I can see Axel’s eyes, as if they were engraved on the inside of my eyelids. I notice each and every one of my cells. I can’t be dead; I wouldn’t feel pain like this. I wouldn’t feel this exhaustion overwhelming me. I’m tired of everything. I take a deep breath, trying to gather my strength: I have to find a way out of this place. But my body won’t listen to me. I’m exhausted, I don’t even have the strength to scream. I collapse onto the sand.
I cannot be dead, I cannot be dead, I cannot be dead.
I repeat it inside my head as my thoughts begin dancing senselessly through my mind. Not... dead. I repeat it like a mantra, trying to drive away this mirage I’m trapped inside. This horrific reality of faces with no eyes, lives repeated over and over again, lives with no death. My thoughts split apart, disconnect, break loose from the images in my mind.
I had told them a million times, Marion and Laura, but apparently it hadn’t stuck. I was done with Axel. I didn’t want to see him anymore. The stunned looks on their faces made me feel sick. Was it so difficult to understand? I loved him, yes, but he was hiding something from me. I had no desire to keep on going with everything and then suffer for it in the end. Fairytales aren’t for me; they never have been. Even when I was a little girl I didn’t care for them—how was I supposed to believe in them when I was grown up? This thing with Axel was over.
“Don’t throw out what you have,” said Marion, her eyes wide.
“You’re going to be sorry,” added Laura, shaking her head.
“I’m totally sure about this. And besides, it’s already done. There’s no going back.”
“There’s always a way back,” burst out Marion. Her and her romanticism. She was convinced that whatever Axel was hiding, it was for my own good. “He loves you.” Her words hit me like a punch in the stomach.
Of course my decision was painful. I had feelings, too, even if it didn’t seem like it. That was exactly why I’d gathered the courage to cut things off.
“I hope he doesn’t try to get in touch with either of you. I made it clear that he shouldn’t, but if he does, you know what to say.”
“That you’re with someone else already...” Laura answered sadly.
The two of them were dying for true love, and they thought that was exactly what Axel and I had.
“Life is so unfair!” muttered Marion.
I spent the next two days in a state of constant, silent fear, forever anticipating the sound of a message alert, an email, a phone call that never came. Every time the doorbell rang my anxiety eased and I felt relief wash over me—finally, the obvious thing was happening. Axel had come back for me. The sensible part of me didn’t want it, but it still felt like getting a letter I’d waited ages for. The doorbell, my heart thundering down the hallway... and then the voice of my mother or one of my brothers. The mail carrier, the neighbor, a messenger—never Axel. After the two longest days of my life I considered it settled. I resigned myself, and accepted that this time I had won. It had worked, and it had been a lot simpler than I had ever imagined. I might have said that my pride was a little wounded, but no. It had to be a relief that Axel finally understood things were over between us. My pride could go take a hike.
Nothing happened until the third day. I had gone to drawing class. A light rain was pattering against the old windows of the studio on Candlemaker Row, and the noise of the cars and the hubbub of people coming in and out of Bobby’s bar were barely audible, swept away by an especially violent wind. The afternoon was so rainy and cold that I was the only one who had come to class. The elderly instructor was even more distracted than usual, which I found particularly annoying that day. I just wanted to dive into my world of paper, to become one with the pencil, to fly off to where all my problems disappeared. The teacher kept looking out the window.
“In the rain, in the snow, in the hottest sun, I shall wait for you.”
I didn’t say anything. By now I was used to his little speeches about Bobby, the famous dog that had stayed by his owner’s tomb for fourteen years. What a sappy old romantic—it was just my luck to have a teacher cut from the same cloth as my friends. He had looked for a studio next to the statue of Bobby just so he could be near the ultimate symbol of faithfulness—he’d told me a thousand times already. That and the story of his romance with a Frenchwoman he met during the war, with whom he lived until the Grim Reaper snatched her away.
“Ah! True love still exists,” he sighed. I looked at him from the corner of my eye. “There will be love as long as there is a world, never doubt it, lovely Eurydice.”
I could never understand why, class after class, he insisted on calling me that: lovely Eurydice. My professor—the whole world, really— seemed bent on telling me over and over again that I was pretty. But my eyes told me it was all a lie every time I looked at myself in the mirror. So I didn’t look at myself very often, only when I really had to.
“See you next week,” said the professor, looking up at the clock. “Draw. Love. Love and draw. Enjoy everything you can of life, one never knows what might happen... Che farò senza Euridice?[2]
A class never went by where he didn’t sing me a little bit of the opera Orpheus and Eurydice. I went downstairs, pulling the hood of my coat up and wrapping my notebook in plastic before putting it away in my bag. Then I had a premonition. It wasn’t a wish, it was a premonition—the kind that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. I rested my hand on the door but couldn’t bring myself to push it open. After a few seconds, finally, I opened it. I knew without looking up what I would see. Axel was standing next to the statue of Bobby the dog in the pouring rain, his hair dripping underneath his soaking wet hood.
“Why didn’t you wait for me at the pub?” I asked angrily.
“I would have if we’d arranged it. If I’d known you were expecting to see me.”
The anticipation and anxiety I’d been feeling for two and a half days began to dissolve, leaving me with an uncomfortable feeling of triumph. That wasn’t right—I had to stay strong. Strong, and above all, sensible. I took out my phone and began to look for the traitors’ names. Laura? Marion? It had to be Marion; she never could pass up the chance to play Cupid. I had a few choice words for her—her first, then Axel.
Axel took the phone out of my hands and put it in his pocket.
“Your friends already told me about your octogenarian boyfriend.” I looked at him, disconcerted. “I saw him through the window. I’d swear he was looking at me, too.”
“What do you want?” I asked sharply. I knew that if we crossed a certain number of words I’d fall right back into old habits.
“You. I want you.”
I hesitated. With Axel I was always walking a tightrope. Ever since he came into my life the episodes of doubt came more and more frequently, and it got harder and harder to keep my feet on the ground. I wasn’t looking for anything. I didn’t want a relationship. I was more or less happy with my friends and my drawings, and then Axel had to show up and turn it all upside-down. Axel and his perpetual happiness. Axel, who never got angry no matter how I snapped at him, no matter how my bad moods bubbled up from nowhere... Axel and that secret he was keeping so jealously.
“Stop lying.”
Overhead the sky grew dark and the rain fell harder, but neither one of us left our place next to Bobby’s statue.
“I’m not lying.” Axel looked into my eyes, trying not to blink, despite the water streaming down his face. “I’m not lying. I’m not lying!” he shouted, holding my shoulders tightly. “Why can’t you see? Why do you have to be so stubborn? What do I have to do to make you see that I don’t have any ulterior motives? I just want to be with you, Eurydice. Do you not see that?” I clenched my teeth and my fists; my whole body went rigid as Axel held me tightly. “I’m sorry, but your whims, your doubts, your insecurity... they all stop here. The world—luckily or unluckily for you—is not the way you think it is. It’s not as full of bad things as you think. There are good people, Eurydice, people who just love other people—that’s it. Just because, without any other reason. The heart is like that. You won’t die if you accept it.”
I shook myself free and crossed the street, confused. Did he just call me insecure? My boots splashed water up to my knees, but it didn’t matter, I was already soaked. The noise of the cars was deafening. I couldn’t tell whether Axel was following me or not. I couldn’t hear his footsteps and I certainly wasn’t going to look back. I got to the bus stop just in time to see the bus driving away, so I reached into my pocket to call my parents.
“I won’t give your phone back until you talk to me.”
Axel was behind me. I huddled over my crossed arms. I wasn’t going to look at him, no matter what. He whispered in my ear:
“Tell me you feel absolutely nothing for me and I’ll go. But look me in the eye when you tell me.”
I turned around slowly. Axel didn’t back up; our faces were nearly touching. I stared right at him and searched inside myself for what I felt. Warmth, and fear, a lot of fear—the terror of standing at the edge of an abyss.
“You make me dizzy. Literally dizzy,” I said.
Axel embraced me; we were both shivering with cold.
“But besides feeling dizzy—do you love me?”
What kind of question was that! I stayed huddled in his arms.
“How did you know where I was? How did you find me?”
“I’m always going to find you. Even if I have to search the heavens, the earth, the sea... I’d search for you even if you were dead. You can be sure of it. If death had the nerve to take you I’d be like Orpheus, I’d find some way to bring you back. As long as you don’t tell me you feel nothing for me, as long as there is something in your heart, I’ll find you wherever you are.”
“But... why?” I asked in a broken voice.
“You’re everything I have. Everything I love.”
“But—WHY?”
I recognize Morgan’s voice, but it sounds like it’s coming from very far away. I open my eyes to see her face and the blinding gray sun. Beatrice and Sherlock are looking at me, too. I fell asleep. I must have spent the night on the beach.
“Last night she said she often sleeps because she is tired,” says Beatrice. “I think it’s normal for her.”
“I don’t understand,” objects Morgan.
“Was that enough?” asks Sherlock, squatting down next to me.
“Yes,” I answer shyly, feeling my cheeks burn, “thank you.”
“We’ve been waiting some time for you,” says Morgan. I’m surprised when she holds out her hand to help me up. “We have to go to the library.”
“And to look for Frankenstein, and to the hospital, and to see whether the doctor has gone,” Sherlock adds, in a tone that makes it clear how ridiculous he thinks it is that I fell asleep.
“All right, all right,” I say grumpily. I’m never at my best right after I wake up. “Why do we need to go to the library?”
“This morning—several hours ago, actually—I mentioned to Holmes that I think we’re overlooking a very important point,” says Morgan.
“Correct,” he notes.
“The flapping wings—we hadn’t thought about the wings.”
“But why do I need to go to the library with you?” I can’t understand why Morgan might want my company.
“You heard the beating of wings on the beach when the Little Prince disappeared, right? You have a general idea of what kind of creature could have made that sound.” I shrug. “We also heard wings flapping when Dorian’s painting disappeared. And what’s more, the shadows that we saw on Castle Street were just that—shadows, plural. It wasn’t a single being that took Dorian’s painting. Holmes and I believe that these... individuals, let’s call them, are not the brains of the operation, but it’s clear that we have to figure out what they are. That could lead us to whomever is behind it, the mastermind. First we’re going to look for Frankenstein.”
“Just so,” adds Sherlock, without looking at me.
“At this hour he should be at home. We only need to see if he’s there. We’ll take a quick look, and if we don’t see anything strange, we’ll leave.”
It’s hard for me to follow what Morgan is saying. The images from my dream are still too fresh, a mishmash of thoughts, pictures, and feelings, difficult to take in. If I were dead I wouldn’t sleep. I wouldn’t dream.
And... what is this feeling? I love Axel... I loved him? I’m not even sure whether the question should be in the present or the past tense. The argument we had at the party left a metallic taste that still lingers in my mouth. I haven’t been able to get that fight out of my head since I came to The Sphere.
But I wouldn’t have fallen asleep if I were dead.
“Holmes,” Morgan leads Sherlock a little distance away from me, but speaks loudly enough for me to overhear. “We should let her sleep more... it’s an imperfect system, but you can see that she needs to recover. She’s not like us.”
“Excuse me?” I ask, indignant.
“You heard me? Oh, I’m sorry, really, that wasn’t my intent. I just want you to be well. We want you to be well, right, Holmes? You’re very important to us. It’s not every day that we get someone sent straight from the Creator.”
As confused as I am, I can’t help noticing Morgan’s sarcasm.
“I am perfectly fine. And yes, I have been sent by the Creator. I can prove it. If we go together I assure you we’ll find out where all the misshapen ones are. That and more—because when I investigate I get results.”
Sherlock gestures with his gloved hand for us to start moving. Morgan gives a snort and begins to walk, her curls bouncing. I can hear her grumbling up ahead. I follow, a satisfied smile spreading across my face.