A Million Worlds with You (Firebird #3)

I always likened Paul’s build to the idealized, masculine ones shown in Soviet propaganda. Now I’m apparently painting him into it. This might amuse me a little if I weren’t trying to adjust to the staticlike sound in my ears that erases all other noise. It’s just so strange—people walking by me without the thump of their footsteps, no echoes of any kind against the tile, mouths moving during conversation as silently and meaninglessly as koi fish in a pond—

A hand waving at the corner of my vision startles me. I turn to see Josie, wearing a long black coat and a knitted cap. She smiles and signs—fluidly and fluently—“We got off work at the same time! Good, we can head home together.”

“Great,” I reply. “Let’s go.”

I wait for Josie to start walking in the right direction, but she stands there for a minute before scrunching her nose in confusion. “You don’t want your bag and your coat?”

When I turn around I see, in a small pile next to the dropcloth, a dark blue coat and embroidered scarf that seem more likely to belong to me than to my supervisor. I put them on, uncovering a knapsack smudged here and there with dried paint. In my pockets are two cloth gloves. To judge by Josie’s warm hat, I’m going to want to wear these.

By the time I return to Josie, she’s shaking her head in affectionate chagrin. “You’re in a dream world today.”

“I’m sorry,” I reply, slightly amazed at how readily my gloved fingers form the shapes. “I’m a little lightheaded this evening.”

Josie laughs. “Not again already!”

Oh, no. Maybe Wicked has been here. But if so, did she just . . . drop a paintbrush on my supervisor and leave? That makes no sense.

When Josie sees my bewildered expression, she pats my shoulder with her free hand. “I was just kidding, and I should know better than to joke about that. Come on, let’s get you home.”

She doesn’t seem set on continuing our conversation, which is good, because I need a minute.

I always believed deafness would mean profound, permanent silence. Apparently I was wrong. For me at least, now that I’ve had time to begin getting used to this, it sounds less like an explosion’s aftermath and more like having a large seashell clapped to each ear—a rushing-roaring-ringing that never gets any quieter or louder. I’m constantly surrounded by white noise, basically, which either drowns out everything else I could hear or is simply the best my eardrums can do in this dimension.

Was I born deaf here? Possibly. But I also remember my father talking a few days ago about the time I had meningitis when I was two years old. Both he and Mom have told that story several times, either to emphasize how much they love me—which is sweet, if melodramatic—or to laugh about how they knew I was feeling better when I started spitting my hospital Jell-O at the nurse. I’m almost positive meningitis can cause deafness. Maybe, in this dimension, my parents took me to the hospital a few hours later, or the antibiotics were slightly less effective. This dimension’s Marguerite survived just like I did, but her hearing didn’t.

Thankfully this Marguerite learned sign early enough in life to have deeply internalized the language, so I have it too. And I have a little more time to catch up on the situation here, since for once I don’t have to thwart either a murder attempt or a crashing dimension. Nor do I have to search for Paul, who is obviously in my life in this world too. My job is protecting this universe, which simply means staying here and keeping Wicked out. All I have to do is get along well enough for the hours it takes Paul to join me here and start building the stabilizer. So I only need to study my surroundings, and my hearing isn’t necessary for that.

To judge from the scale of the mural and the tiles on the floor, I had assumed I was painting in some kind of civic building—whatever would come closest to a city hall here. But this turns out to be a train station so opulent it makes the BART look like a garbage dump. As we get closer to our track, the crowds thicken. Apparently we got here at the very top of rush hour. The train itself is clean, but sort of old-fashioned. No ads. Josie and I are crunched in together so tightly that there’s no chance to talk. I’m not even sure I could get my hands in front of my face.

We hop off after only two stops, and I take careful note of the station and the directions, in case I have to navigate this on my own later. Then I follow Josie up onto the street.

Josie and I turn the corner, and I see a statue of Lenin, several stories high, seemingly standing against a powerful wind and pointing forward. When I let my gaze follow the direction of his finger, I glimpse the distant, multicolored onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral.

Russia, I think, a wave of nostalgia washing over me. I’d known it might be as soon as I recognized Lenin in the mural, and the style of it, but something similar might have been painted in any Soviet Bloc nation since the Revolution. I could’ve walked out anywhere from Estonia to the Ukraine—and, since this is a new dimension with new rules, potentially even San Francisco itself. But no. I’m back in this country that has come to mean so much to me.

However, this is a very different Russia. Instead of beautiful, elegant Saint Petersburg, I appear to live in Moscow—and I bet in the universe ruled by Tsar Alexander, Moscow looks better than it does here. All the buildings constructed in the previous century are plain concrete, the architecture so dull and uninspiring that the effect has to be deliberate. The elegant subway stations testify to an earlier age, one that wanted its public places to create awe. Apparently that sentiment died out a long time ago. The cars moving past us are so square and squat they could be shrunk down to fit in with a Lego set. Mom told me the Soviet Union didn’t believe in capitalist decadence, and decadence apparently included manufacturing automobiles in any style besides “ugly.”

It’s twilight. Josie must be tired after a day at work, but her attention is all for me as she asks, “Do you want me to walk with you all the way to your place? I don’t mind.”

The sunset light catches a glint on her finger as she talks to me, and I realize she’s wearing a slim band of gold. A wedding ring? Oh, please don’t let her be married to Wyatt Conley in this universe. After the carnage of that final, fatal car wreck in the Triadverse, I will never again be able to see his face without remembering what it looked like after it had been split open. And even the worlds where he’s an okay guy, where his love for Josie is true and good, remind me that his grief for her is fueling the Home Office’s brutal slaughter of the dimensions.