“How could I forget? You almost gave me a heart attack.”
She kicks water up to the sky. A drop touches her lips. It’s salty. Untreated ocean water. It tastes of her dream with Metis.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks, wading toward her.
“Tabula Rasa.”
“Ah.” Melancholy touches his eyes.
She changes the subject. “And something else. The rings that Seraphina asked me to take to the Gift Market. They’re like ours. Where did they come from?”
Metis shakes his head. “One of us must have hidden ours in the chair cushion at home. I don’t know how we got them in the past. Maybe at the Gift Market.”
“Everyone there had them. Was that why Bodie let us in? He thought we were there to—as well . . .”
“Probably. Maybe that’s why Seraphina didn’t want him to know that we weren’t supposed to be there.”
“The design—I wonder if it means something.”
Metis shakes his head. “There’s so much we don’t know that we may have once known but have forgotten.”
Aris leans back and lets the starry sky fill her vision once more. She thought their rings were unique—that their story was unique. But there are more couples like them, struggling to stay together through Tabula Rasa. There is no point in trying to figure out the riddle. At least not now. There is so little time left. She just wants to spend the rest of it with Metis.
Just me and you.
“The cottage by the beach. Where was it?” she asks.
He pulls her close. “Do you want to go there?”
She nods. “I want to see it in real life. But I don’t think I have enough entertainment points left.”
“I still have most of mine.”
“You didn’t use them?”
“Not enough reasons to use them. I can see any concerts I want at Carnegie Hall for free. I don’t like eating out by myself. And I didn’t date.”
“Do you think that’ll be enough?”
“We’ll have to see. We’ll have to go back to my house and get my watch.”
She realizes he never has his watch on.
“Why don’t you wear it?”
“Tracking. I didn’t want to be caught. None of the Dreamers are supposed to wear them.”
“And you’re willing to wear it now?”
“I’m not the Sandman anymore.”
“Who is?”
“I can’t tell you. The secret is not mine to share.”
Silence follows.
“Metis?”
“Hmm?”
“Should we talk about what happened tonight?”
She feels his grip tighten around her.
“Are you still upset?” he asks.
“It was the worst thing I have ever seen. But I can kind of understand them. The desire to take back control. To make choices. To make their lives their own. To love who they want. To be with who they want.”
“Choice is everything. But control is an illusion.”
“Yes. Logically you understand. But some of us are too human to embrace it.”
“I suppose.”
“And you? Are you still upset?” she asks.
“I was. Then I realized there was nothing I could have done to change it. Now, I’m just happy to be here with you. But I suspect I will be upset about it again. I just don’t know when.”
“I wish I could be that way.”
“I’ve spent most of my life trying to explain everything in logical terms,” Metis says. “But I realized it was just my way of putting things at arm’s length. It was getting in the way of really feeling, really living. Being present.”
He runs his hands along her sides. “At this moment, the feel of your skin is all I want to focus on.”
Be present.
She wants to be. She closes her eyes and centers her attention on the feel of Metis’s touch against her skin. The warmth of his hands. The smoothness of his long fingers. The way they send electric currents through her body.
In the present, time has no meaning. There is no past. No future. Only this moment exists in the middle of the universe.
She feels the warmth of him in all the crevices of her body. Slowly she opens like a flower. A sigh escapes her lips. She is experiencing it again, that feeling of falling yet filled to the brim. She lets it consume her in its fire.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Aris and Metis arrive in Lysithea before dawn. A shroud of fog descends onto its dark streets, painting it gray. Droplets cling to her hair and jacket like a desperate lover.
She feels as if she is sleepwalking. The only thing that seems real is the warmth of Metis’s hand on hers. She lets herself get lost in the gray pavement and the repetitive rhythm of their steps.
“We’re here,” Metis says.
She looks up from her feet and gasps at the view of the twinkling city lights below. They had at some point passed the section covered by the low-lying fog. Now they are standing on a hill where the sky is clear and the fog is but an earthly trouble they have left behind.
“Where are we?” she asks.
He turns her body, and she sees the robin’s-egg-blue Victorian house. A smile spreads across her face. The chilly air nips at her ears, and Aris wants more than anything to fall into a warm and peaceful sleep in her lover’s arms.
“Can I sleep till tomorrow?” she asks.
“Sure. I just have an errand to run tonight, but I won’t wake you.”
The door opens, and what both she and Metis see makes them stop cold at the threshold. The large vase at the oak table is empty. The arrangement of green flowers has vanished. One corner of the round Persian rug is kicked up into a bunch.
Metis grabs her arm and directs her behind him, shielding her with his body. The forcefulness of his action alerts her to the severity of the situation. He navigates his house as if it is a battle scene. They walk slowly on the spines of the floorboards to keep the creaking to a minimum. His head whips around like a panther searching for prey. Aris follows him like a shadow. She is afraid to breathe, lest the intruder hear her and attack. Her
