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I know my time is running out. I can feel myself getting weaker and weaker. I can’t stop thinking that the boatman, Charon, might be able to help me get out of the Sphere, even though the Count said it was useless to try and leave by the river. I feel sorry for him, and for all the Sphereans. I would help them if I could, I would restore order before I left, but I just don’t have the time.
I walk along, deep in thought, until I somehow end up at what used to be my summer house. I spent barely a week there with my family, and then...
It’s there! It’s back!
I run as fast as my weakened legs will let me. My heart is bursting out of my chest; my anticipation and joy mix together, reddening my cheeks, giving me a little strength back.
My skin prickles from my head to my toes as soon as I walk in the door. Everything is just as it was the last time I saw it. There are two towels lying in the entryway; my mother’s white hat is on top of the credenza. On the kitchen table I find the book and the newspaper that my parents were reading the morning I fought with the twins. I hear something crunch underneath my feet—the iPod! But where’s my family? I look for them in the yard, then hurry upstairs, out of breath, calling out:
“Mercutio! Mom! Benvolio! Dad! Where are you?”
The house is empty, but all their things are here. It’s getting late. The sky is covered with thick rainclouds, so it doesn’t seem likely that they would be at the beach. Actually it doesn’t seem very likely for them to be at all, unless I’ve somehow found my way back to my world without even realizing it.
I walk weakly along, my only thought reaching East Sands. Raindrops begin to fall on my head. The rain is light but steady, and it makes no sound at all. In just a few minutes the rain picks up until it’s so heavy I can hardly see. I wipe my face with my sleeve. I’ve finally reached the top of the hill at East Sands. The beach is completely empty, except for a small group of people sheltering from the rain under some sort of blanket. I shout myself hoarse calling out the names of my family. The group runs toward the end of the beach where I am, and I see that they’re dressed in clothes from the ‘50s. They go up to the street and disappear in a black Buick with rounded contours.
I realize that if I were in St Andrews right now the grass would be giving off its wild, strong smell. The total lack of any odor is an affront, a slap that reminds me of how little time I have left.
“I fought to live in spite of everything,” Axel said when I accused him of leaving his father alone in Edinburgh.
I feel Axel’s hand caressing my face. A love beyond death—just what I’d always wanted. I think of the invisible thread the Count told me about. Axel is my anchor, the only thing that stops me at times like these from drifting away and being lost forever.
Fight, Dissie.
It’s as if I’m hearing his voice.
New strength bubbles through my veins. I’ve got to find the way back. It doesn’t matter what the Count said—I’ll find the River of Ink even if I can’t go through his garden. Then something occurs to me, and I’m suddenly filled with hope. What if the river that goes through the Count’s garden is the same as the stream that runs near my summer house?
I turn around and go back, wishing on the stars above that my house hasn’t disappeared, that the stone bridge, at least, is still there. By the time I get there I’m completely soaked. Everything is where it belongs. I look down. The river is flowing in sinuous, echoing waves, nothing like how it looked on the night of the accident. The pencil I was carrying in my pocket drops into the water and a circle ripples around it, growing larger and larger. It’s only then that I realize I’ve lost my notebook. A pit opens up in my stomach. Then I understand something with total certainty: it isn’t objects that keep us linked to the people we love; it’s something intangible, something you can feel even when you can’t see it.
I feel strong and determined. I have to follow the river. I’ll find Charon no matter what Dracula says. With this sense of conviction I start walking, following the current. In the distance I see an impassable barrier—from here it looks like the river flows beneath a group of houses. I don’t want to change streets; I’m afraid if I change course now I won’t be able to find the stream again. The wind has picked up and the rain is falling horizontally, but my footsteps are as determined as ever. As I come closer to the houses, the outlines of the buildings start to blur, like when water spills on an ink drawing. The gray of the walls trickles across the landscape and disappears, like a thick canvas is absorbing it. When I reach the point where I should have run into the obstacle, I can walk right through.
The Sphere is a malleable world, made out of a special kind of clay. Suddenly I think of the way that creature I heard from the tomb was shouting curses, and how they echoed all around. I could hear it so clearly it was just as if I had been watching. The words went back into the mouth of whatever it was that had uttered them. This place is made of something magical—I hope I can get back home without having to give up the Sphere.
I don’t see too many obstacles ahead, and every time one appears, it dissolves and vanishes before my eyes. The rain pricks the cushion of water in the stream, which turns into a wider river up ahead, though it still doesn’t flow terribly quickly. I doubt that it gets deep enough anywhere to support the weight of a boat and its passengers.
Finally I see a white smudge in among the trees. Charon’s boat, as small as a nutshell. How could anyone travel in that? The boatman is a tiny, serene person. He might be a thousand years old—it’s impossible to guess his age. He has white hair that falls in waves and nearly covers his whole body. His hands, resting in his lap, are holding the stem of a large leaf to shield him from the rain.
“Who goes there?” he asks.
I say nothing, and try to control my breathing. I don’t want to be discovered.
“Who goes there?”
My plan is to sneak up so carefully that Charon doesn’t realize he has company until I’m already on the boat—then I’ll figure out what to do next. Maybe I can convince him with my story. There has to be a heart inside that scrawny little form. Charon’s eyes move beneath his closed eyelids. Dark rings surround the blind wells of his eyes. He has a melancholy air; he gives off such a sense of solitude that I can’t look at his face without feeling moved. I watch him, captivated, glad that his blindness lets me look at him without being seen. Even greater than the boatman’s melancholy is his aura of kindness. An overpowering feeling of fondness comes over me, and I stretch my hand out to stroke his wrinkled face. Charon jumps back, and I regret it right away. So much for my plan to take the boat by surprise.
“What are you?” Charon asks.
Why didn’t he say who?
“Answer—do you not know how to speak?”
“I’m Eurydice,” I say softly.
“What do you want, Eurydice?”
It’s probably going to be easier than I thought. What if I just make my request? He’s realized right away that I don’t belong to the Sphere. What if I open up my heart to this blind old man? Maybe he’ll understand, and take me back home.
“What are you doing here?”
I’m paralyzed; I don’t know where to start.
“Why did you touch me?”
“I don’t know.”
It’s true—it was instinctive.
“What do you seek here, Eurydice?”
“To go back home.”
“Why did you leave home?”
“It was an accident...”
“I am sorry for your accident, but there is nothing I can do,” Charon says. His tone of voice is flat, and I can’t guess at his thoughts. “Find some other way.”
“Please. I know you can.”
The rain keeps falling steadily, but I’m not moving until I’ve convinced the boatman.
“They have told you of the river, eh?”
“Yes,” I admit. “I know it’s the way in for all the new residents of the Sphere. And I know it’s you who brings them over.”
“That’s right. It’s the way in. You cannot get out here.”
“But I don’t belong to this world! I have to get out.”
The boatman is quiet for a while.
“I do not know if it is possible to get out. The membrane at the entrance to the Sphere is upriver, but as far as I know it only opens in this direction.”
“It opens the other way, too! Beatrice got out.”
Charon’s face lights up like a coal, but the rest of his body is still. I’m afraid that I’ve made him angry—now I’ve surely lost my only chance to get out, if there was any chance to begin with.
“How many know about Beatrice?”
“I think just me... She accidentally confessed.”
I’m relieved to realize that the boatman is blushing more from embarrassment than anger. I decide to try my luck—after all, I’ve got nothing to lose.
“Beatrice is the one who should be ashamed, you know? It was nasty of her to take advantage of your condition to trick you.”
At last the rain stops. The raindrops trickle slowly down from the leaves of the trees onto the grass. Charon falls back into a heavy silence. Everything about him is deliberate, even his silences. I have enough time to watch a spider hard at work between two branches, weaving its web with patience and meticulous care. I don’t know if it’s the hushed song of the river, if everything in this place lends a sense of calmness, or if it’s the influence of the boatman, but even with this anxiety weighing down my heart I feel like time has stopped, like there’s no hurry. I breathe deeply and enjoy the feeling. After a while the deep wrinkles in Charon’s face relax, and the expression of gentle, solitary wisdom that moved me to touch him before returns. His slender, wrinkled hands set the leaf he was using as an umbrella gently down in the boat. A slight movement from beneath the boatman’s fine eyelids tells me he has finished his deliberations.
“So, can I?” I ask, so quietly that the sound barely leaves my body.
Charon nods and slowly takes up his oar so I can get in. I take a step toward the boat, with no idea at all how I’m going to fit into something so tiny. I move my right foot carefully, with the finesse of a ballerina. It seems like my best bet, given what the boat is like. As soon as the tip of my foot reaches the white nutshell it grows larger. Soon both my feet are inside. Still, I haven’t even sat down on the rough wooden crosspiece when the boat sinks almost to the bottom of the river. It bumps against the pebbles and water rushes in, soaking us. Charon’s long, white hair, which had stayed dry so far, is dripping now, and the boat is flooded.
“I am sorry, but you have to get out,” says the boatman, up to his neck in water but still totally calm.
Then, without warning, my tears come. They splash against the surface of the river, stirring up new streams of water and huge rolling waves. I cry wildly but silently for a few seconds, and then explode in a wail of pain that contains everything I’ve held in for years. Everything that ever hurt me, from the littlest thing to the biggest, it all comes out of me in the form of salt water. My weeping is so great that the river starts to rise. Charon throws his head back to keep his nose and mouth out of the water. He’s on the verge of drowning when the water rushing out of me finally runs out. I wipe my eyes with my hands and take in the boatman’s sad situation. I come over and carry him back to the riverbank on my shoulders. Once the boat is empty, it turns back to the size of a nut, and begins to float again.
“Nothing like that has ever happened,” says Charon, sitting on the grass at the edge of the river.
“You mean my crying?”
“Your crying was remarkable, but I meant the sinking. No one who weighed so much has ever gotten into my boat. I’m sorry, but it won’t be possible to carry you to the start of the river.”
“I could swim,” I say.
“Impossible. The river would spit you right back out. It only allows the boat to pass, nothing else. Don’t think you’re the first to try going upriver under your own power. More than one person with an explorer role has thought they might reach the limits of the Sphere, and then they’ve had to be fetched back from the beach or from some hilltop... The river spits you out quite forcefully, believe me. I don’t recommend trying it. And now, if you would be so kind as to help me back to my boat, I would appreciate it. I feel out of my element when I’m not in it.”
“Of course!”
I help the boatman back to his fragile vessel. Once he’s inside again, he clasps his old, knobby hands in his lap. Charon’s serenity has an undeniable beauty.
“Don’t you get bored here by yourself?”
“How would I get bored? This is my role. Everything is good when everything is in order. Though to tell the truth, things have not had their usual perfection in some time.”
“What do you mean?”
“No one has arrived for some time. Normally I’m not here; I usually go upriver and wait there. I stay there with the boat and when I feel weight I know someone has gotten in, and then I carry them to this side. But there hasn’t been a new publication in so long that I no longer bother going up the river. If someone does show up, they’ll shout, or I’ll hear the waves.”
“All of the Sphereans weigh something?”
“That’s right. The weights vary a little from one to the next, though no one weighs as much as you. The boat floats with all of them.”
I know there’s not much else for me to do here. My time is running out; I’ve got to find another way out.
“Thank you, Charon.”
I take his hands in mine and squeeze them affectionately. The boatman smiles gently. I walk away, still carrying a little bit of Charon’s serenity with me.