“Yes,” Trix tried to say, but it came out as little more than a breath.
“How old were you?”
“Seven. My grandparents told me not to go too close to the river. We were on vacation in Baxter State Park in Maine. They were in the cabin getting dinner, and I… I went for a walk.”
“Too close to the river,” Veronica said.
“Yeah.” Trix remembered seeing the branch above her for the last time, shattered into a hundred slivers as she slipped below the water and sunlight glancing from the surface rippled her vision. Something grabbed her then and dragged her away, her limbs trailing through plants and weeds growing across the riverbed, though she could not grab hold of anything. She remembered wondering why, with hands so small and strong, nothing would let her hold on. And then after that things were dark and lost, until the sun prized her eyelids apart and her grandfather was crying above her.
“In the other Bostons… I don’t know if you drowned in that river at the age of seven, or died at a later age in an entirely separate incident. But in both of the other Bostons, you no longer exist.”
“Three years ago,” Trix said. “I had a bad car crash.” A chill went through her, raising goosebumps on her arms. For an instant too short to be measured she felt totally, utterly alone, little more than the memory of a name in the cool vastness of space. Then Jim adjusted the mirror again so he could see her, and his kind eyes brought her back.
“You died there, Trix,” Veronica said. “But here you live. And that makes you one of a handful.” She turned back to Jim. “You, too.”
“Jim?” Trix asked.
“Meningitis when I was six,” he said. “My mother always told a story about me fading away and then coming back again. I died, she told me. They brought me back.”
“And so they did,” Veronica said. “But in those other Bostons, death caught up with you, either that day or some other. You’re both Uniques. Most people exist across realities, but not you. And that gives you a certain freedom that those people don’t have.”
“What freedom?” Trix asked.
“To dream. You’re missing over there, but perhaps when you sleep, you know those other worlds.”
“The paintings,” Trix said, and she saw Jim’s gentle nod. The cityscapes that haunted them both were more real than they could have imagined.
“We’re here,” Veronica said, gesturing through the windshield. “Third house along. Come inside, and I’ll show you.”
Jim pulled up to the curb and put the car in park, killing the engine. “Just tell me,” he said. “Please, just tell me.”
“It is possible that you’ll see them again,” Veronica said. “That’s what you want to know, isn’t it? But much will depend on what the two of you do next.”
Standing at the front door, feeling Jim slip his hand into hers while Veronica fumbled with a set of keys, Trix had a very definite image in her mind of what to expect in an Oracle’s home. There would be walls lined with books and framed maps, both old and new. There would be a wealth of artifacts from Boston’s past-many of them rare, some perhaps believed lost to antiquity. There would be dark, shadow-clogged rooms with high-backed leather chairs, a liquor cabinet, perhaps, and the carpets would be worn by generations of honored footsteps. Perhaps the place would be slightly run-down, in need of a spring cleaning, but the accumulated dust would be a sign of just how crammed the building was with evidence of a wonderful history. An Oracle was a human as well, and there would be a kitchen and dining area with a well-stocked fridge and pantry. And upstairs, perhaps she slept in a four-poster bed, her window open to the night so that she could hear the pained requests and sad wishes of those in the city who believed.
But as Veronica pushed the door open, Trix realized quickly that her preconceptions were about to be shot down.
The hallway was light and airy, the stairwell rising above them to an atrium window on the third floor. Moonlight flooded in, silvering the walls and dark wooden staircases. The floor was light oak and the furnishings spare: a phone table, a chair, a coatrack with a lone umbrella propped in the stand.
“Please, come in,” Veronica said. “Hang your coats. The rack’s by a radiator so they’ll dry.”
“Where are we going?” Jim asked.
Veronica closed the door behind them and smiled gently at Trix. “There’s a room upstairs,” she said. “I’ll lead you. It’s where Thomas McGee tried to cast his abominable spells, and where he probably died.”
“Probably?”
“It was his library. His study. This whole house.” She waved one hand to indicate the building around them, taking in all the rooms whose doors they could see and others they could not. “He could have used any room, but he chose that one. And every time I even walk by the closed door, I know why.”
“You sound afraid,” Trix said.
“The room… fascinates me,” she said softly, and then without further explanation she started up the staircase.
Jim followed without even sparing Trix a glance. He thinks he’s close, she thought. He must be terrified that she’s lied, or is mad, but he can’t ignore the idea that every second takes us one step closer to getting them back.
Trix climbed the stairs after Jim, and soon Veronica stood on the landing outside a closed door. She was pale, and the effect was not simply moonlight on her skin. The gentle artificial light emphasized the bags beneath her eyes, and the skin hanging on to her jawline seemed to defy gravity’s best efforts. Her eyes were wide, and there was a sheen of perspiration across her brow. “You don’t have to-” Trix began, but Veronica quickly cut her off, harsh and berating.
“Of course I do!” She reached out and opened the door. “There’s a small anteroom, then another doorway. An attempt at privacy, put in by Thomas McGee, I suspect. Just… just look for now. Look and see, and you’ll believe me. You might not understand… but you’ll believe. Then come to the living room downstairs, because I have something to give you.”
“What?”
“Two letters.” Veronica swayed past them and started down the stairs; she seemed to strengthen a little, and a smile crept over her face.
Trix suddenly felt abandoned.
Jim grabbed her hand and nodded at the open door. Inside, in the shadows, she could see a second closed door. A strange smell emerged-old, wet ash, and something less identifiable, like the scent of fallen pine needles but more sour.
“Are we doing the right thing?” she asked softly, and Jim scoffed.
“You’re the one who-” But he stopped mid-sentence, his face softening. “Trix, if there’s any clue, any chance that I can know what happened to them”-he looked at the doorway-“however crazy…”
“We have to take that chance,” she said.
“Yeah. We have to.” Holding Trix’s hand, Jim reached for the inner door.
With a Wonder and a Wild Desire
A S J IM pushed the door inward, he felt resistance, as though the air pressure was different on the other side. It opened with a sigh, a musty breath escaping from within, and he thought of Carter discovering the tomb of Tutankhamen. He entered, and Trix followed a step behind.
The only light came from behind them, providing just enough illumination to make out the ragged outline of a broken chair, and to see that the rough wooden floor seemed to have been blackened by flame. Then Trix made a murmur of discovery and clicked on a lightswitch, and a ceiling fixture on the other side of the room blazed to life.
“Holy shit,” Jim whispered.
Trix stepped up beside him, and the two of them looked around the room, unnerved. It was not merely the floor that had been blackened by fire, or at least scorched by a blast of blistering heat. Bookshelves had partially collapsed, leaving piles of books on the floor beneath them that looked like little more than ash sculptures. On the shelves that were intact, some of the books looked as though the fire had been a hungry animal, gnawing away the bindings and leaving scorched pages exposed. Others had their bindings intact, but they were only partially legible.