Memory and Dream

the utility blade away from her throat, the edge had already sliced through the flesh of her throat. A wash of warm blood flooded down onto her shoulders and chest.

Alan was still moving forward, unable to stop his lunge. Over his shoulder, she had a momentary glimpse of Marisa’s shocked features. Then the force of impact as Alan rammed into her knocked the back of her head against the wall behind her. The sharp pain of the blow was the first pain she’d felt since cutting herself.

She felt Alan’s hands gripping her shoulders, slipping on the bloodied fabric of her shirt. She heard him shout something, but there was a loud humming in her ears and she couldn’t hear what he was saying.

She didn’t really try. A vast pool of darkness welled up inside her and she let herself fall into its depths.

There was no pain there. No Rushkin. Only peace.

Only peace.

But she fell through the other side of the pool. It was like an hourglass with a top at either end. On the far side of the darkness her eyes flickered open and she swayed dizzily. The pain was still gone, but so was the throat wound. She stood in a place so familiar it hurt.

It was night, here on the far side of the darkness. Snow fell thickly about her. She stood up to her knees in white drifts and would have fallen from the vertigo, except there was a castiron gate in front of her on which she was able to catch her balance. Beyond the gate was a backyard. Rearing above it was the back of a house, a familiar house, the one that had held the apartment she’d shared with Kathy all those years ago on Waterhouse Street. As she lifted her head, she saw the colored ribbons tied to the fire escape outside her window, fluttering in the wind-driven snow.

Dying had taken her back into the past, she realized. Dropped her into a piece of memory, one of the few that she’d never distorted or forgotten. But then how could she ever forget this night? It would be easier to forget how to breathe.

She looked for Rushkin and Paddyjack, but she couldn’t see either of them. Had she arrived before or after the cloaked figure of Rushkin arrived with his crossbow? She listened for the tappa-tap-tap of Paddyjack’s fingers dancing upon his wooden forearm, but all she could hear was the wind. Her gaze returned to the fluttering ribbons, then dropped when another movement caught her attention. Under the fire escape she saw the receding back of a figure as it made its way down the laneway that ran alongside the house.

She forgot how she got here. Forgot Rushkin and pulling the blade of the utility knife across her own throat. Her entire being was focused on that receding figure and the idea that if only she could call him back, this time everything would change. She was being given a second chance, she realized, a chance to undo all the mistakes she’d made the last time. She could still rescue her numena from the fire. Still save Kathy’s life. But it all depended on her not letting John walk out of her life this time.

She hauled herself over the gate and fell into the snow on the far side. “John!” she cried as she struggled to her feet.

The wind took the sound of her voice and tore it into tatters too small to carry. She forced herself forward through the snow.

“John!” she cried again.

XIII

Oh, Jesus!” Alan cried as Isabelle’s blood washed over them both.

He’d managed to knock the utility blade out of Isabelle’s hand, but he’d been too late to stop her from cutting herself. His forward momentum knocked Isabelle into the wall behind her, cracking the back of her head with enough of an impact to dent the plaster. As she started to slide down, he grabbed her shoulders, fingers slipping on the bloody fabric of her shirt. He let go one hand to support her head and slowly lowered her dead weight to the floor.

All her muscles had gone slack. When he finally had her on the floor, her head lolled to one side. The blood was making his stomach do flips. He stared numbly at the horrible sight, gaze blurring with tears.

“She ... she ... she ...”

She’d really done it, was what he was trying to say, but the words locked in his throat, corning out only as sobs. He stared at her, feeling more sick by the moment.

Behind him, Marisa finally broke her paralysis. She grabbed clean rags from the worktable and hurried to his side, feet almost sliding out from under her on the polished wood floor as she rushed.

“We’ve got to stanch the flow of blood,” she said. “I’ll hold these in place while you try to get through the door.”

Alan gave her an anguished look. “But ... but she’s ...”

“She’s not dead,” Marisa said, shouldering him aside. “But she will be if we don’t get her some help soon.”

“All this blood ...”

Marisa swallowed thickly. “I know.” She swabbed at Isabelle’s neck with one of the rags. The white cloth immediately turned crimson. “But look,” she added, pointing to the actual wound on the side of Isabelle’s throat. “You deflected her aim enough so that all she cut was the fleshy part of her throat. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“It’s ... not?”

“The door.”

Still numbed by shock, Alan turned to look at it.

“It’s not that thick,” Marisa said. She didn’t look at him, concentrating her attention on Isabelle. “See if you can’t ram something through one of its panels. Or even the walls—Christ, they’re only plaster.”

Alan turned back to look at Isabelle. A shudder ran up his spine. “But she’s so still,” he said.

“I think you knocked her out when you banged her up against the wall.”

“Jesus. I never meant to—”

“The door, Alan!”

This time something got through to him. He shook his head and rose unsteadily to his feet to look around the room. After a moment, he swept his arm across the top of the worktable, knocking its contents to the floor. Then, using the long table as a makeshift battering ram, he aimed the point of one of its corners at the door and slid it across the floor. The point hit a wood panel with a satisfying crunch, but it didn’t break through.

Alan pulled the table back. He looked at the door, imagining that it was Rushkin standing there, and heaved the table forward again. This time the point of the corner went right through the thin wood of the door panel.

“One more shot,” he called back over his shoulder to Marisa.

She didn’t answer. She was too busy stanching Isabelle’s wound.

It was still Rushkin’s face that Alan saw in the wood panel as he drove the point of the table’s corner into it a third time. When he pulled the table back there was enough of a hole in the door for him to put a hand through and fumble for the key that was still in the lock on the other side.

XIV

The third time Isabelle called his name, John turned.

“Don’t,” she cried, floundering on through the snow toward him. “Please don’t go.”

But this time there was no coldness in John’s eyes. No rejection. When he saw her, he hurried forward, reaching out a hand to help her reach the comparatively easier passage created by a trough in the drifts that ran up to the corner of the house.

“I know I can do it right this time,” Isabelle said, once they reached the sheltering lee of the house.

The wind wasn’t so strong here. The snow didn’t fall as thick. “I promise you, I won’t screw it up. I’ll save the numena and Kathy.”

In the light cast by the bulb hanging above the back porch, she studied John’s features, wanting to see that he believed in her, that he trusted her to do the right thing this time, but John was looking at her strangely.

“What ... what is it?” she asked.

“You’re Izzy again,” he said.

Old nickname, given name, what was the difference? Isabelle thought. There were more important things to deal with at the moment than names.

“No,” he went on, understanding from the look on her face what she was thinking. “I mean you’re young