Memory and Dream

Both Rolanda and Marisa looked uncomfortable, but after a few moments of consideration, they each gave a reluctant nod. Alan directed his attention back to Cosette once more.

“You’re going to have to start at the beginning for us,” he said.

Cosette fixed him with her luminous gaze and gave a solemn nod. “What do you want to know?” she asked.

“Well, you could start with why Rushkin is such a threat to you that you want him dead.”

Cosette regarded each one of them in turn. When she saw that she had their undivided attention, she took a deep breath and told them about Rushkin and Isabelle’s relationship, how she’d received the gift from him and how she’d used it.

“But it was all a trick, you see,” she said. “The only reason Rushkin showed her how to do it was so that she’d bring lots of us across and then he’d have that many more of us to feed on.”

“How does he feed on you?” Rolanda wanted to know.

Cosette shivered. “I don’t know. Not exactly. Not what it’s actually like. But it starts with his destroying the painting that first brought you across ....”

Alan and Rolanda exchanged glances, each of them thinking of the fire on Wren Island that had destroyed all of Isabelle’s work. But then Cosette went on to tell about Rushkin’s return and how his numena had kidnapped Isabelle.

“We have to go with her,” Alan said. “We have to help Isabelle.”

“I don’t know,” Marisa said. “This is all so surreal ....”

“I think we should go to the police,” Rolanda said.

“And tell them what?” Alan asked. “Do you think they’re going to believe what we have to tell them?”

“Maybe not all of it,” Rolanda argued. “But the kidnapping is real, isn’t it?”

Alan shook his head. “They’re just as liable to throw me in jail this time. Or have us all committed for psychological evaluation. And then what happens to Isabelle?”

“He’s right,” Marisa said. “The least we can do is help her first. We can work everything else out later.”

“I can’t be party to it,” Rolanda told them. “I’m sorry. I can’t condone any kind of vigilantism. It doesn’t solve anything—not in the long run.”

Alan sighed. “That’s okay. I understand. But this is my friend we’re talking about and I’m not going to take the chance of her being hurt because I wasn’t willing to step into the line of fire.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Rolanda said. “I just can’t be party to it myself”

“Will you give us some time before you go to the police?”

Rolanda nodded. “But if I don’t hear from you within a few hours, in all good conscience I have to talk to them—even if they will think I’m crazy.” Alan stood up. “Then we don’t have any time to lose,”

he said. “Marisa?” This time there was no hesitation upon her part. “I’m with you,” she said. Cosette scrambled to her feet. “You’re really going to help?”

When they both nodded, she clapped her hands together.

“Wait’ll John sees this,” she said. “He thought you wouldn’t even care.”

“A few hours—that’s all I can give you,” Rolanda called after them as they set off.

Alan looked over his shoulder and gave her a wave. He knew that Rolanda had been the voice of reason in the discussion just past. This was a job for the police. But they’d stepped past logic into a world that looked exactly like their own except all the rules were changed. In this world it seemed better to trust instinct, and his instinct told him that they had very little time to lose.

“Is it far?” he asked Cosette.

The wild girl shook her head and began to walk more quickly. Alan took Marisa’s hand and they hurried after her.

“Thanks,” he said. “You know, for coming and everything.”

“I would have been more disappointed in you if you weren’t so loyal to your friends.”

Alan wasn’t so sure that it was a loyalty to Isabelle that was making him do this. The Isabelle he’d met out on the island was more of a stranger than someone he could say he knew very well. His real loyalty lay with the person Isabelle had once been. It lay with the ghosts of his memory that he’d never been able to set aside.

IV

Isabelle couldn’t look at John. She walked to the table and began to screw the tops back onto the tubes that she’d opened when she first started her painting. The enormity of what he was asking of her weighed her down. Rushkin was a monster, yes, but

He dies, or we do.

She arranged the closed paint tubes in a neat row, then picked up her brush from where she’d dropped it. The painting claimed her attention, as though the half-finished angel of vengeance was calling to her for completion. But that was avoiding the issue again, wasn’t it? Expecting someone else to always be cleaning up after her was as bad as pretending there had never been a problem in the first place.

The truth was, she’d made a life study of denial.

Picking up the can of turpentine, she splashed some of the clear liquid into a glass jar and then put her brush into it. She swished the brush around in the glass, watching the paint swirl into the turpentine with a fascinated concentration that was completely at odds with the action.

“Isabelle,” John said softly.

She was unable to face him. The quiet understanding in his voice was harder to take than anger would have been. Anger she could have understood. His compassion was unbearable.

Her gaze drifted back to her painting. She shouldn’t be rendering an angel of vengeance. She should be taking on the role herself.

“I get so confused,” she said. “How much of what Rushkin told me is real and how much a lie? He said you’re not real.” She turned to look at John. “He said that I could only make you real by giving you a piece of myself.”

John considered that for a long moment. “Maybe we already are real in the sense that you mean,” he said finally. “Maybe we always have been because you gave us your unconditional love. Those of us that Rushkin brought across were denied that love and that’s probably why they’re so hungry. They need what he can never give them, what you gave us freely without ever thinking about it.”

“And the others who survived,” Isabelle asked. “Do you think they feel the same way? They’ve never really talked to me about it and for the past few years they’ve all been avoiding me—even those I thought were my friends.”

John shrugged. “Cosette’s desperate to have a red crow beat its wings inside her. That’s what she thinks she needs to be real.”

“A red crow?”

“Blood and dreams.”

“Is that what it takes to be real?” Isabelle asked. “It doesn’t make any sense.” John nodded. “Or are we only different?”

Isabelle sighed. “But I still don’t think I could kill Rushkin,” she said. “Maybe if he came at me with a knife or something, but not in cold blood. I’m sorry, John. I don’t have what it takes.”

“Do this much for me at least,” he said. “Come away from this place. Make your decision while you’re not directly under Rushkin’s influence.”

Isabelle glanced at the open door behind him. “You mean we can just walk out of here?”

“Rushkin’s banking on your not being able to leave—not because he won’t let you, but because he doesn’t want you to. It comes from the same arrogance that insists you’ll keep on bringing us across to feed him. You tell him you won’t, but—” Isabelle’s gaze followed his as it tracked to her uncompleted painting. “—but just a few moments ago he was boasting to me that in the end, he always wins.”

Isabelle shook her head. “Not this time.” She walked over to the easel and took her painting down.

“This time I’m taking charge.”

“And what will you do,” a familiar voice asked from behind John, “now that you’re ‘in charge’?”

They both turned to see Rushkin leaning weakly against the wall outside in the hall. In one hand he held what appeared to be some artist’s juvenile work, an awkward painting lacking depth of field or any sense of composition of light values. In the other he held a knife, the tip of which rested against the top of the canvas. Isabelle glanced at