“Where am I?” she asks, squinting at the lights.
“The Interpreter Center.”
Her neck begins to hurt. She looks back down. Officer Scylla. He is blurry. She blinks a few times. She knows the reason she is here, but why is he here?
“Why are you here?” she asks.
“I’m here, Aris, because you’re a suspect in a crime. I have a few questions for you.”
“Crime?”
“Don’t you remember what happened at Bodie’s house in Elara?”
Is suicide considered a crime? They didn’t hurt anyone but themselves.
“I do,” she says.
“Can you please tell me why you were there?”
I don’t want to.
“Metis and I went to help Bodie get his dreams back.” She looks around. “Where’s Metis?”
“Don’t worry about him for now. Let’s go back to the reason you were at Bodie’s house.”
“I have a Dreamcatcher. Well, not really. I only have the helmet. It projects dreams into images. It doesn’t erase anything. Bodie had his dreams erased here, did you know that?”
“Yes, I do. He came here for a treatment.”
She laughs. Her laugh sounds dry in her ears. She is thirsty.
“Oh no, you’re wrong. He didn’t want it. Neither did Benja. They steal dreams here.”
“They do?”
“Benja killed himself because of it,” she whispers. “Now he’s with the blue birds of happiness.”
He leans forward. “One thing at a time okay? Let’s get back to Bodie’s house.”
“Sure. It’s a nice house. The walls are happy.”
“I mean, can you tell me what happened there?”
I shouldn’t.
“Seraphina and Bodie’s wedding.”
“How do you know them?”
“Metis knew them. Seraphina was so pretty. I didn’t like her. Not at first.”
“Why not?”
“I thought she and Metis were lovers. But she only loved Bodie.”
“Did you know that Seraphina worked for the Center of Disease Control?” he asks.
“Did she?”
Aris begins to lose interest in her conversation with Officer Scylla. He asks too many questions, and none of them pertain to her. And it bothers her, though only in passing, that she told him things she didn’t want to. A spot on the wall attracts her attention. It’s a tiny black spot that vibrates. She stares at it, trying to figure out what it is.
“Her job was to synthesize plants for medicine,” Officer Scylla says.
“Well, that makes sense.”
“Aris, who made the poison?”
“You just told me.”
“Did I?”
“Yes, silly. You forgot already? Seraphina.”
“So, she killed all those people?”
“No. Well, yes. But not really.” The black spot on the wall moves. Aris squints, trying to focus. Her vision seems foggier than usual.
“You’re not making any sense,” Officer Scylla says.
“I think that’s a fly,” says Aris of the thing on the wall.
“What?”
She tries to pull up her arm to point at it, but they are stuck. She had forgotten about the bracelets.
“Officer Scylla, I have to say, this is the most useless conversation I’ve ever had,” she says. She is not angry but merely expressing her opinion.
“I’m sorry about that. I assure you, the feeling is not mutual. Can we get back to Seraphina?”
“If you want. I didn’t know her very well. We only met there the one time.”
“Did Seraphina kill the people?”
“She only made the poison. But she didn’t kill them.”
“Then who did?”
“They did. They all wanted to die.”
“They all killed themselves?”
Aris nods.
“But why?” he asks, his voice perplexed.
The affable policeman’s face goes through multiple emotions. Confusion. Grief. Sadness. Despair. Seeing it makes Aris feel as if she is watching blue sky being swallowed by storm clouds. For a moment she wants to give him a hug. But she cannot. She is stuck here in this chair.
“Because they didn’t want to be without the ones they loved,” she says. “Now can you please tell me where Metis is?”
Metis stares at the shiny copper contraption above him. It is the size of the entire ceiling. No matter where he looks, he cannot escape it.
He thinks of Benja. Toward the end of his life, his sunken eyes had no trace of hope in them. A man without his dreams.
What will a dreamless life be like for him? A life with no memories of Aris or of their past together. He focuses his mind on the spot on her palm, the one he used to lie awake at night remembering. It’s etched in his brain like music. What if they take away his memory of music with it?
An existence without Aris or music. He wonders how he will end it. Benja used poison and went in peace. Quick and painless. At least he hopes it was.
He and Aris were within grasp of a way out of Tabula Rasa—a way to remember each other in the next cycle. Now that hope is gone. Without his dreams, there would be no point to the helmet. All the Absinthe in the world would be useless to him.
On one wall is a large window that reflects the room back to him. He cannot see beyond it, but he knows the Interpreter is there.
Where’s Aris?
He begged the Interpreter to not erase her dreams. He told her Aris is just the woman he loves. Not a Dreamer. Not a threat to the Four Cities. Apollina did not care. So he did the only thing he could. He bargained.
Shame slithers over his skin like a snake. He is disgusted with himself, ashamed of his weakness. But he did not have a choice. He never did. He loves Aris too much. He once told her he would trade everyone’s lives to keep her from harm. And he has. He has sacrificed everything.
Attachment . . .
Thane enters the dilapidated cottage with trepidation. The only lights are the threads of the sun’s rays shooting through the random holes in the roof. He walks slowly, hoping not to fall through the decaying floor.
Metis gave up the source of the drug—the reason for its reappearance every cycle. He did it so Aris could keep her dreams.
He loves her.
This is the weakness Tabula Rasa was created to erase. Thane asks himself if he would have
