Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

She stood up from the bench, shivering from the cold that had lodged inside her—a cold that had nothing to do with the winter fields lying about them. She stuck her hands in her pockets to keep them from trembling.

“Izzy, you’re taking this all—”

“Please. Just let me go.” Her throat felt swollen and it was hard to get the words out. “Don’t ... just don’t come looking for me ... anymore ....”

Then she fled. Before he could see her tears. Before he could call after her. Before he could weave a new set of lies to replace the old ones that weren’t working anymore. Because even as she ran from him, she wanted to believe the lies. Wanted to pretend he’d never said any of those horrible things to her.

Wanted to be with him and everything to be like it had been before.

God help her. She loved him and he wasn’t even real.

Behind her John rose from the bench. He took a few steps after her, but then hesitated. He didn’t follow after her. He stood watching her go until she was no more than a tiny figure, running far down the path, a dark, distant speck against the white snow.

“I never meant to fall in love with you,” he said softly.

But she was no longer even in sight.

VI

You did what?” Kathy said. “How could you break up with him? I thought you were so happy with him.”

Izzy turned away from the window and gave her a miserable look. The sky had clouded over again on her way home and now it had started to snow once more, big fat flakes drifting down. She wished it were raining. Rain would suit her mood far better.

“I don’t know how it happened,” she said. “I just go so confused. And then he started lecturing me about my responsibility to those I brought over from this ‘before’ he keeps talking about ....”

“But you do have to be responsible towards them.”

“I know that. I just didn’t want to hear it right then. I wanted him to—I don’t know. Confide in me, I suppose. I wanted to understand, but not like that.”

“Then maybe you should have given him a copy of the script. How was he supposed to know?”

“You’re not helping, Kathy.”

“I’m sorry.” Kathy left the pillow where she was sitting and settled down beside Izzy. “It’s just all so weird. I can hardly believe any of it’s real.”

“You saw Paddyjack.”

“True. But John—he never seemed any different from the rest of us, you know? And he’s really got it in for Rushkin, doesn’t he?”

Izzy nodded. “The thing is ..... Izzy hesitated. She’d never told Kathy about the violence in Rushkin’s personality. She’d never told anyone. She knew the flaw in Rushkin, but she still couldn’t help but feel that the violence was also somehow her own fault. That if she could only be better, he wouldn’t get so mad at her.

“You just don’t see it,” Kathy finished for her.

“I guess. But John never lies.”

“Not that you know of.”

It was like talking to John about Rushkin, Izzy thought. That same confusion of, who do you believe?

“Everyone has secret landscapes inside them,” Kathy said. “There’s no way to tell how deep they go.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It’s just another way of saying ‘still waters run deep.’ All we know about each other is that face we present to the world. Inside we could be anything. Anybody.”

“So who’s the real villain?” Izzy wanted to know. “John or Rushkin?”

“Lover or mentor.”

“Or maybe it’s me. Since I’m the one bringing people across from this otherworld. Maybe I’m the villain.”

“Never a villain,” Kathy assured her. “But maybe there is no otherworldat least not in the sense that either of them are telling you. Maybe you’re bringing them up out of yourself.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Maybe they come from those secret landscapes,” Kathy said. “The place where we go when we dream. The place where the muses whisper to us and we bring back the inspiration for our art. Accepting magic as a given, if you can bring back inspiration, then why not an actual manifestation of that inspiration?”

“But that doesn’t make any sense.”

“And painting a nonexistent person’s portrait and so making them real does?”

“I don’t know,” Izzy said. “I don’t even think I care. I just wish I could turn back time to before ...

before this evening ever happened.”

As Izzy’s eyes filled with tears, Kathy put an arm around her. Izzy burrowed her face in the crook of Kathy’s shoulder and began to cry. When she finally sat up again, Kathy took a Kleenex tissue from out of her sleeve and passed it over. Izzy blew her nose.

“The worst thing is,” she managed after a while, “I’ve got no way to get hold of him so I can’t even tell him I was wrong, or that I’m sorry or anything.”

“If he loves you, he’ll be back.”

Izzy shook her head. “You don’t understand. I called him a liar. He told me once that his word was the only currency he had that was of any worth. He’s got too much pride to come back to me. Don’t you see? I’m never going to see him again. I told him not to ever see me again.”

When she started to cry again, Kathy drew her back into her arms.

“Oh, ma belle Izzy,” she said, the words getting lost in Izzy’s hair. “What are we going to do for you?”

This time when she stopped crying, Izzy let her roommate lead her into her bedroom.

“Do you want me to keep you company for a while?” Kathy asked.

Izzy shook her head. “Could you ... could you take the painting out of my closet and lean it up against the wall where I can see it?”

Kathy looked in the closet and found The Spirit Is Strong standing in among a stack of papers and hardwood panels.

“Are you sure this is such a good idea?” she asked as she pulled it out. “It’s all I’ve got left of him.”

After propping the painting up against the wall, Kathy stood there for a long moment before kneeling down beside Izzy’s mattress. She smoothed the hair back from Izzy’s brow and gave the exposed skin a kiss.

“Call me if you need anything,” she said.

Izzy nodded. She waited until Kathy had left the room; then she pressed her face into her pillow and started to cry once more. It took her a long time to fall asleep; when she did, she found no comfort in dream.

It began innocuously enough. She was outside, walking through the falling snow, the whole city muffled in silence. Even when a cab passed her on the street, the sound of its motor was muted. No one else seemed to be abroad, a rare occurrence in this part of town. Even when the deep frosts settled onto the city, there were always one or two hardy souls to be found out and about on Waterhouse Street.

But tonight she had it to herself. She walked down Waterhouse to Lee Street. Perry’s Diner was closed, the windows dark. Only the neon sign was lit above the front door. When she looked up and down Lee, there were no cars, no pedestrians. The clubs, the restaurants and stores were all closed. The snow continued to fall, thick and fast. Underfoot it was gathering into lazy drifts that spun across the width of the street, the snow pushed and whirled in small dervishing twisters by a rising wind.

She didn’t know why she turned into the alleyway just past the diner. Her feet seemed to know where they wanted to go and she was content to follow, but her complacency died in her chest when she entered the mouth of the alley and looked down its length. There, on the landing of a fire escape that seemed to have been taken directly from her painting, was the winged cat. But it wasn’t the presence of the cat that woke the sudden terror in her. At the bottom of the fire escape, half-hidden by the swirling snow, a squat hooded figure holding a cross-bow was creeping up its metal steps. The cat watched the figure rise up toward it, the tip of its tail flicking nervously with a rattling sound.