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I wrap my arms around myself, shivering a little from the cold as I pull the cord in front of the Count’s elaborate gate. I look around. This world is simply beautiful. In this closed forest alone I can distinguish a nearly infinite number of shades of green. My eyes notice the flesh and the texture of the leaves, the iridescence from the faint rays of sun playing in the fog.
Dracula’s butler trots down the path over the dry leaves. Now I can appreciate all sorts of different browns and oranges and golds. The little man’s pointed shoes shine like they’ve been lacquered. His jacket is indigo, with golden buttons and a collar of deep red. I adore the colors! He looks at me with those restless eyes that look like they were carved from onyx.
“I would like to see your master. I was here the other day with Sherlock Holmes.”
The butler looks at me and gives me the same grunt he gave us on our first visit. This time, though, he doesn’t have to think about it for too long. He opens the gate and asks me to follow him to the rear part of the mansion.
“I did not expect to see you so soon,” says the Count, his back to me.
“How did you know...?”
“Dear Eurydice, your aura is unmistakable.”
The Count turns toward me. Like Beatrice, he moves strangely, like he’s sliding through the air. It makes it look like he’s floating on a cloud. Curious, I can’t resist glancing down at the hem of his infinite cloak—it’s impossible to see his feet. Immediately the Count opens his cloak, revealing a pair of elegant shoes.
“Sorry,” I say, meaning it from the heart. “I forgot you could read my mind.”
The Count smiles. He has a pair of gardening shears in his hands. Only then do I realize we’re standing before a spectacular rose garden, with roses as far as the eye can see. Right next to us are a couple of bushes covered with roses of all different sizes and colors, and a little farther away is the entrance to a labyrinth made of rosebushes.
“Excuse me for asking, but... can you be in the sunlight?”
“Do you see sun here?”
“Not really, no. At least not direct sun.” I realize that he must be the one who generates the ever-present thick fog. “Your roses are magnificent.”
“I know. Thank you. Though I do not believe you have come all this way to discuss my gardening abilities.”
“It’s true, I haven’t,” I say thoughtfully. “I guess it doesn’t make a lot of sense to beat around the bush with you, does it?” The Count nods slowly. “I was trying to be polite—it doesn’t seem right to show up and bombard you with questions. But whatever, I don’t really have much in the way of social skills. I don’t know how to talk about other things to get to what’s actually on my mind, you know, the way other people do. A segue, I guess it’s called.”
“You’re doing it right now. Not terribly skillfully, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, but you are creating a segue. A rather long one, in my opinion.”
I drop my head, embarrassed by my own lack of skill.
“So you have come to find the Sphere fascinating after all, haven’t you? So much resistance, so much denial. Wasted energy. Careful, Miss Eurydice, or you might end up falling in love with all of us.” I look up with surprise. “Don’t worry. That won’t keep you from falling more deeply in love with one particular person if you’d like it to be so. You could always love us all but adore a single Spherean, one of your choosing. Every heart likes to have its favorite.”
The butler appears, carrying a tray with a jug and a single glass. He puts it down on a round wrought-iron table and disappears. The Count invites me to sit down.
“Don’t worry—there’s no liqueur this time.”
He pours water into the glass and hands it to me, then sits down across from me.
“For you?” I ask. The Count tilts his head to one side. “Ah, you don’t drink things like that. I understand.”
Then fear seizes me. The only information I have about vampires comes from horror movies for teenagers that my friends and I used to watch, though now, looking at Dracula, I don’t think it’s very reliable information.
“I only attack Sphereans. I tell you this only for your own peace of mind.”
“Thank you,” I say, taking a drink of water. Then a thought occurs to me and I start to choke. “You said you only attack Sphereans—you mean I’m not one?”
“Does it seem to you that you are?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.” At first I felt quite clearly that I didn’t belong to this world. I couldn’t make head or tails of it. Then I started to understand its rules, and now I even enjoy the repetitions. Just like the Count says, in a certain way I have fallen in love with the Sphere. “Can I tell you something?”
“Go on.”
“It’s easier for me to understand you all now that you have eyes, and your world has color.”
“Ah, so that’s happened, has it?”
The Count seems amused. His tone makes me doubt myself. Before my eyes his face transforms, his skin grows young again, then old, the bags under his eyes appear and disappear. It makes me realize that for some time now, my fellow investigators haven’t looked like they were made of wood. Maybe I’ve just learned to see them properly...
“You have gone deep into our world, Miss Eurydice,” says the Count with a smile.
“I’m not one of you. That’s my answer.” Dracula stares at me, as if waiting for my next question. “So... so this isn’t the world of the dead... No, of course not,” I say, anticipating the Count’s words. I feel like I’m starting to see into other people’s minds, too. “You’re not dead, you couldn’t be. In your way, you all are as alive as I am. Maybe... maybe I was the one who didn’t have eyes to see. Now when I look at you all—at you, at all the Sphereans—it seems ridiculous that I ever could have thought you were made of wood... or of paper.”
I shake my head and laugh gently. The Count smiles with a sweetness that makes his eyes shine.
“Careful, Miss Eurydice. You’re falling in love with the Sphere.”
“Would that be so terrible?”
“They say that falling in love with us is like catching an incurable disease. You go into an addictive spiral, but it’s completely voluntary. You stop eating, stop sleeping so you can learn more about our world...”
“How do you know that we eat and sleep?”
The Count moves his right hand elegantly, and I somehow understand that he’s heard of us.
“Do you know of my world?”
“Unfortunately not. I only sense it.”
My mouth goes dry. How could he possibly sense it?
“Thanks to you,” says the Count, answering my thoughts. “Your presence allows me to discern the shape of your life, your relationship to the people with whom you lived...”
“Could you help me go back?” I ask, full of hope and desperation.
“Impossible. I would first have to know how and why you came to the Sphere. I am afraid that only you will be able to find your own way out.”
“Help me—please, I’m begging you!”
Dracula closes his eyes and goes into a sort of trance. The seconds seem to last forever. A chilly wind begins to blow around the rose garden, dancing past my legs and whipping up the dry leaves at my feet. My hair shifts in the breeze and then falls again.
“I am sorry. I fear that the key is not within my reach. I can only sense that you are here until you learn what it is you have to come to learn. That is, if you do learn it. Your time here is not unlimited. I am sorry.”
“What should I learn? What are you talking about? What do you mean my time isn’t unlimited?”
The Count squeezes my hands affectionately.
“I am sorry, dear girl, I do not know what you are meant to learn. I suppose you must search inside yourself to find out. Perhaps you will find something that you had trouble with in your other world, and that might be your test here.”
I sit there, stunned. I know the Count is right about my time—I’ve felt that way myself ever since I came to the Sphere. That is, I’ve felt that way whenever I didn’t get carried away by the certainty that I was dead. There is something urging me to act quickly, I can feel it—but what is it I’m supposed to do? Dracula gets up and begins to trim the dry branches of his roses, completely absorbed in the task of caring for his rose garden. I look down into my half-full glass. The ripples of water play strangely with what little light comes through the fog. What is it that I was worst at in life? I was bad at so many things that it would be easier to ask what I was good at. I was a disaster in my life—I mean, in my other life. Now I know it is possible to go back. I feel a sharp pain in my chest; my heart truly aches. I start to think about the twins, my parents, Laura and Marion... and of course Axel.
I don’t know! How can I know! What was it I was worst at? I look at Dracula. It seems like the entire world outside of the roses has disappeared for him. He isn’t paying any attention to me, or even noticing the black birds that have begun to circle overhead. The only thing that matters to him is the roses. I envy him...
“I know!” I exclaim, more loudly than I’d meant to. I cover my mouth with one hand.
Dracula comes over to the table and gently sets down the shears and a little bouquet of white, gray, and pink roses.
“For Mina?” I ask, and he nods.
“Have you discovered, then, why you have come to our world?”
“Not exactly, but before, watching you, it occurred to me that I’ve never had the ability to lose myself completely in a task. Nothing has ever absorbed all my attention, all my care...” I think back to the innumerable times when I drew. “Except drawing. That did absorb me totally. Actually, I still draw. Sometimes I draw in the sand on the beach.”
The Count looks thoughtful.
“When drawing, you are the only one participating.”
“Yes,” I say sadly, with some embarrassment. “I never get involved that way with other people.”
“Then you have your answer. Maybe Beatrice is not wrong about you after all. Maybe you have been sent in some way. Why not look for a way to restore order to the Sphere?”
I doubt the sincerity of his words. Are they really coming from his wisdom? Couldn’t it just be a selfish plea for me to find Mina? Now that I know this isn’t my world, that it doesn’t have to be, I just want to get out as soon as possible.
“Nothing has to be, in reality,” the Count says, reading my mind. “To love is selfish? I don’t know. Evaluate it and judge for yourself. You could refrain from getting involved with us. You could live free of responsibility.”
When he puts it that way I feel like that is how I’ve chosen to live so far. I haven’t tied myself to anything—nothing bad, but nothing good, either.
“Think about it, miss,” the Count says as he stands up. I realize that I’ve taken up enough of his time, and I stand up, too. “Think about it, and do not bring pain to those who love you most.”
The butler appears immediately, without being called. He looks up at his master with a devotion I hadn’t noticed before. I realize they understand one another so well that they can communicate mentally. The little man accompanies me to the door and the gate closes behind me, leaving me full of doubts, ideas that come and go, hope, and frustration, too. I know that the easiest thing would be to fail. That’s the path I’m used to taking.