He sees it all, from the shadows. Sees the Company men transformed. A just punishment, he thinks. She is good and fair, his new Eve. How had he ever thought she was ethereal? She is of the water and the earth.
Outside the window, rain has started to fall, and he sees her raise her hands to it, her eyes turned toward Heaven.
“And so reveal in water and in sky,” he murmurs. “The mirror of the Heavens and the window of His eye.”
He has to lean against the trunk of a tree as pain roars through him, radiating out from his stomach. There are thorns growing inside him. His heart is beating so fast that it could burst from his chest, red and wet, another bloom in the darkness of the forest around him. His legs weaken and he lets himself sink into the deep green moss on the floor. This is what he has always wanted—to feel the life beneath his hands; the quickening heartbeat, the slow pulse of the earth. To follow a line back to its source; to read the maps of creation. Here he is, at the beginning and the end.
“Dr. Grey…” He opens his eyes. It is the young widow, kneeling beside him, and behind her, the train girl.
“This is Elena,” she says.
And she is here, looking down at him. She shines.
“Elena…” Names are important. He has always felt the satisfaction of knowing, classifying, writing down. It is an act of faith, to make sense of God’s creation. “You saved me,” he says. “Outside, in the water. Why?”
“Once, there was another man,” says the girl, says Elena. “He was like you, a little. He wanted to know the truth of things. He wanted to understand. He was looking for … communion.”
“Yes … Yes. I have always endeavored to … My life’s work … Did you save him too?” He tries to keep his eyes open, to keep her in his gaze, but it is hard. He is so tired.
“He was not saved. And I am sorry for it.”
Henry Grey nods. “I understand what you are,” he whispers. “You are what I have been searching for, all these years.” The end of the line he has been following. A new Eden. Now he has found it, there is nothing to do but rest. “A more perfect form,” he says, or perhaps he just thinks it. Within all things, a striving to achieve a more perfect form.
“You can sleep,” he hears her say, “if you are tired,” and the pain that has accompanied him for so long has vanished, leaving a space inside him that feels like the wide, clear halls of a palace of glass.
He closes his eyes. There is nothing more he needs.