Lex, sitting across the table, still has his hand over mine. He keeps pressing his palm into my knuckles like I might vaporize into nothing if he doesn’t hold tight. Sometimes he hides in the darkness of his blindness, and other times he fears it will swallow everyone up and leave him alone.
Alice dabs the cold cloth to my forehead and then drapes it across the back of my neck, still fretting that I’m too red.
“Thomas thinks it may not be cause to panic,” I say, trying to reassure her. “He said the flower shop still uses flame lanterns and it was probably an accident.”
“There will be a broadcast tonight for sure,” she says. “Thank goodness you’re safe. We heard the fire was near the theater and we’ve just been all over the place about it.”
Lex is squeezing my hand. I close my eyes, trying to pretend that I’m blind, trying to understand what it means to be in this world without seeing any of it, not knowing where anyone is, if they’re safe.
I can see the red of my eyelids, but it’s still horrifying. It isn’t simply that I was missing in that chaos—without the sound of my voice, to him I’d disappeared into that darkness entirely. I could have fallen over the edge of Internment.
“I’m sorry I made you worry,” I say. I lean over the table so that I’m closer. “I’ll never disappear. I promise that every time I leave, I’ll always come back.”
“Not coming back wouldn’t be the worst thing,” he says. “For any of us.”
“None of that talk,” Alice says. “You’re going to scare her.”
“She should be scared,” Lex says.
“I’m not,” I say, but I am.
“Everything is going to be fine,” Alice says. “We’ll know more when the broadcast goes up. And if there is no broadcast, then it can’t be too serious, now, can it?” She’s handing me a cup of tea, ushering Lex and me to the couch.
Soon, I feel myself falling asleep under the unfinished blanket, as Lex works skillfully at its edges. Some distant part of me understands that there’s cause to worry and that I’m frightened, but it’s safe and warm inside, and Alice is moving about the kitchen, cooking up the smell of something sugary sweet. She asks me a question, something about my hair, and though I don’t hear her I nod assent, and in the next moment she’s peeling off my velvet gloves and gently unclasping the wooden barrettes in my hair.
When I was small, my brother would let me follow him on the train for entire afternoons without a destination. We would ride until we were hungry or had to find a water room. The train would always be crowded and I’d stay so close to him that I could hear his murmurs as he wrote on scraps of paper. He never spoke to me, always writing or looking at the city passing by. But it didn’t matter. I knew the honor of having been invited. We were two parts of the same set then, our skin as pale as the sunlight that washed over us through the glass, both of us silent and blue-eyed in the bustling crowd. On these trips I began to feel we were the same. I would catch our reflection in the window and fancy myself a perfect miniature version of him.
The train that circles Internment couldn’t carry him far enough, though. My brother, the peripatetic, the sage, was too restless to stay in one place, but one place is all we’re given. The only one who could quell this restlessness was Alice, always Alice, who swears she was born already in love with him. When she wasn’t allowed to have their child, something fell apart and they lost themselves for a while.
The train speeds past the apartment, rattling the walls, and I dream that I’m riding it in my theater dress. I’m on my way to meet my betrothed waiting for me on the platform. I dream about the other passengers, and I wonder who’s waiting for them. I wonder what keeps the conductor conscious as he navigates through the night. I dream about the murderer, out there somewhere, and wonder where he is when the train passes him by.
6
Break the sky. Look up. Look down. Beyond what is familiar. If you’ve never been afraid, you haven’t had your moment of bravery just yet.
—“Intangible Gods,” Daphne Leander, Year Ten
IN THE MORNING, I AWAKEN WITH STIFF muscles and the notion that something is wrong. But it isn’t until I realize I’m still on the couch, Lex’s unfinished quilt replaced with the heavy blanket from my own bed, that I remember.
“Good morning, love,” my mother says, setting down her sampler when she sees that my eyes are open. “Would you like breakfast? I brought home some fresh strawberries.”
That’s right. She was at the market when the fire happened. “Are you okay?” I sit upright. “When did you get home?”
“There was a broadcast,” she says by way of an answer. “Your father wanted me to wake you for it, but you seemed so exhausted.” She’s sitting on the edge of the couch now, smoothing back my hair. When Lex grew too old for her affections, she lavished me with double, and to make up for his absence I’ve always welcomed them.
“What did the broadcast say?” I ask.
“The king’s investigators are looking into the cause of the fire. He just wanted to reassure us that everything will be fine.” While my father is trying to introduce me to a more honest view of the city, my mother is still trying to coddle me.