Susan Newman didn't just lose her innocence. She had any hope of a normal life torn away.
'Do you need anything?' Chris asks. 'Money? Food? A place to stay?'
I shake my head.
'Give this a little time,' he says. 'You're suffering from trauma too, you know.'
I let him talk on, but I stop listening. I've regained my strength. I can leap tall buildings with a single bound again— or at least spider my way up their walls— but I don't have the heart for it anymore. I don't have the heart to step into anybody's dreaming place and then shut him down. And I certainly can't see myself killing someone again— I don't care how much he deserves it.
After a while, Chris stops talking and I walk away. He starts to follow, but finally gives up when I keep increasing the distance between us.
I don't wear my bodysuit anymore; I don't look like some dimestore ninja. I just look like any other homeless person, wandering around the street in clothes that are more than a few weeks away from clean, looking for handouts at the shelters, cadging spare change from passersby.
A month goes by, maybe two. I don't know. I just know it's getting really cold at night. Then late one afternoon I'm standing over a grating by a used bookstore, trying to get warm, and I see, in amongst the motley selection of titles that crowd the display window, a familiar cover and byline.
I've got two dollars and eighty cents in my pocket. I'm planning to use it to get something to eat later, but I go into the bookstore. The guy behind the counter takes pity on me and sells me the book for what I've got, even though there's a price of fifteen bucks penciled in on the right-hand corner of the front endpaper.
I leave, holding the book to my chest, and I walk around like that all night, from one side of the city to the other. I don't need to read the stories. I was there when they were written— almost a lifetime ago.
Finally, I start walking up Williamson Street, just trudging on and on until the downtown stores give way to more residential blocks, which give way to drive-in fast-food joints and malls and the 'burbs, and then I'm finally out of the city. The sun's up for about an hour when I stick out my thumb.
It's a long time before someone stops, but when this guy does, he's going my way. He can take me right up into the mountains. I find myself wanting to apologize for the way I look, for the way I smell, but I don't say anything. I know if I try to say anything more than where I'm going, I'm just going to break down and cry. So I sit there and hold my book. I nod and try to smile as the guy talks to me. Mostly, I just look ahead through the windshield.
I don't know what I'm expecting or hoping to find when I get there. I don't even know why I'm going. I just know that I've run out of other options.
Without Annie, I don't know where to turn. Only she'd be able to comfort me, only she'd be able to help me reclaim my dreaming place. I've had to shut myself off from what's inside me, because when I step into my private place, I get no solace now; when I dream, I have only nightmares.
What was my only haven is home to monsters now.
9
'Are you sure this is where you want out?' my ride asks.
There's something in the tone of his voice that tells me he doesn't think it's exactly the greatest idea. I don't blame him. We're out in the middle of nowhere, and Betsy's trailer looks deserted. The lawn's overgrown and thick with leaves. Her vegetable and flower gardens are a jungle of weeds. The trailer itself was never in the greatest shape, but now shutters are hanging loose and the door stands ajar. From the road we can see that a thick carpet of forest debris has already worked its way inside.
I guess I'm not really surprised. Betsy was an old woman. It's been over a year since I was here with Annie, and anything could have happened to her in that time. She could have moved. Or died.
I don't like to think of her as dead. There are some people who deserve to live forever, and although I only met her that one afternoon, I knew that Betsy was one of them. Eternal spirits, trapped in far too transient flesh.
Like Annie.
My ride clears his throat in case I didn't hear him. This guy's so polite. I was lucky it was him that stopped for me and not some loser who thinks with his dick instead of his heart.
Or maybe, considering, it was lucky for those losers. I've still got the anima's gifts; I just don't use them anymore.
'Yeah, I'm sure,' I tell him and get out. 'Thanks for the ride.'
I stand by the end of Betsy's overgrown driveway and watch the car until it's out of sight. There's something in the air that calms me, smoothing all my nervous edges. No longer summer, not quite winter, everything just hanging between the two. I take it all in until I hear another vehicle coming up the road, then I dart into the woods, Annie's book clutched to my chest.
The glade doesn't look anything like I remembered it, either, but I know it's just because I'm here in a different season. The surrounding trees have all lost their leaves and everything's faded and brown. Except for the fairy ring. The toadstools still stand in their circle, the grass is still a deep green, and there's not a leaf or twig lying within the circle.
I know there's probably a sound, scientific reason why this is so, but I don't have access to the paper's morgue anymore to look it up, and besides, I've seen the anima. I'm more likely to believe that fairies are keeping the ring raked and tidy.
I stand there, looking at it for a long time, before I finally step into the ring. I lay Annie's book in the middle and sit down on the grass.
I don't know what I'm doing here. Maybe I thought I could call up the anima. Or Annie's ghost. But now that I'm here, none of that matters. All the confusion and pain that's sent my life into its downward spiral after I killed Newman just fades away. My pulse takes on the slow heartbeat of the forest. I close my eyes and let myself go. I can feel myself drifting, edging up on that dreaming place inside me that I haven't been able to visit for months because I know the monsters are waiting for me there.
I'm just starting to get convinced that maybe there is a way to regain one's innocence when I realize that I'm no longer alone.
It's neither the animal-headed fairy women nor Annie's ghost that I find watching me from the edge of the ring, but Betsy. I think for a minute that maybe she's a ghost, or a fairy woman, but then I see how frail she is, the cane she's used to get here, how her face is red from the effort she's made and her breathing is way too fast. She's as real as I am— maybe more so, because I don't know where I've been these last few months.
We don't say anything for along time. I watch her lean on her cane and slowly catch her breath. The flush leaves her face.
'I read about your friend,' she says finally. 'That must have been hard for you.'
Tears well in my eyes and I can't seem to find my voice. I manage a nod.
'It's always hardest for those of us who get left behind,' she says, filling the silence that grows up between us. 'I know.'
'You... you've lost someone close to you?' I ask.
Betsy gives me this sad smile. 'At my age, girl, I've just about lost them all.' She pauses for a heartbeat, then asks, 'You and your friend— you were... lovers?'
'Does that shock you?'
'Land's sake, no. I left my own husband for a woman— though that was years ago. Folks didn't look on it with much understanding back then.'
They still don't I think.
'I think it makes it that much harder when you love someone folks don't think you're supposed to and she dies. You don't get a period of mourning. Folks are just relieved that the situation's gone and fixed itself.'
'But you still mourn,' I say.
'Oh yes. But you have to do your crying on the inside,'
My eyes fill again, not just for Annie and me now, but for Betsy and her long-gone lover. Betsy looks like she's about to lose it too; her eyes are all shiny, and the flush is returning to her cheeks, but then she wipes her eyes on her sleeve and straightens her back.
'So,' she says, trying to sound cheery. 'What brings you back? Another story for your newspaper?'
