Page 48 of The Quiet
Hollow and Paris watched her now, side by side, Paris leaning back toward the hallway and whispering something that sent the guards off. She folded her hands in front of her stomach as if holding something precious between her palms, and in this poised way, she shared a truth that it seemed she’d imparted many times before.
“Every now and again,” she began, “the disillusioned find their way to our side. Their bodies are free, but their minds are still arrested by Peter’s cursed illusion like fish floundering out of the water. It’s always best to throw them back in until they outgrow the water.”
Silence lingered, the water dripping off of Ella’s clothes into the pool in an almost melodic fashion.
“The other world.” Ella felt her assumptions about the world fall loose like books freed from their bookcase. “An illusion? Peter’s illusion?”
“We’ve done our best to guide people out of it through the religion of the Spirits,” Paris explained, “building up great altars to Spirits that they can see murkily from the other side. If in good faith, their prayers and actions, guided by our religion, will bring them closer to The Quiet. It draws them through that maze of their fragmented lives and back to reality again. Peter’s curse was rich, ornate, and powerful. No power yet exists that could unravel what could arguably be his masterpiece and so we could only build a system to counter it.”
“Peter did this,” Ella processed the revelation aloud, “Why?”
“To save his herd from the Burning of the Strike.”
Ella’s mind began skipping thoughts, portions of the revelation sinking in while others did not. “Why not flood the city?” Ella asked as she resisted the ideas and all of their implications. “Why not put out the fire? Why not–”
“He did, in a way, but not all fires are hot, and not all that burns is fire. The flames were not what was killing his people,” Paris replied, “ideologies were.” There was a long pause, permission perhaps for Ella to think before the explanation continued. “But we haven’t solved all of the mysteries of what happened. These are our theories from the outside and that’s all. We’ve been waiting for answers, waiting for the right people to wake up who might have them.”
“The Spirits are all an illusion,” Ella repeated, remembering how faithfully so many of her friends and family followed them through prayers, statutes, paintings, ceremonies, holidays.
“Meant to guide people to the truth,” Paris replied, “The sun blinds just as it guides. The full truth would be incomprehensible to them. Our doctrine makes it digestible as they are ready to digest it, and nothing else. Those that look for the truth in it will be the ones that find it. If you look for lies in it, you’ll find those too.”
Ella looked back out at the windows, noticing the flags again with the emblem of the sun on them, much like they were in the Imperia. The symbol represented a path to truth in both lands, only the people were on opposite sides of it.
No wonder the spirit of Life was so easy to rebuild. Every altar and temple in this land had been built by these people, this society, and the capital must have known, at least some of them must. Maybe Crow had figured it out.
“You’re safe here,” Paris assured her. “You can stay here as long as it takes to settle in. Tomorrow, we can show you the town and consider having a home finished for you. We have a process to integrate people as they arrive here. It will begin to feel normal after a few days and we will talk more when you’re ready.”
Ella stayed in the water, as if walking off felt like leaving Kay behind. Would he come up on the other side and realize she was gone, or would a new version of her burst through the water, an illusion he’d happily live with until he was ready to cross over on his own? She couldn’t help but feel like she was abandoning him.
Paris seemed to watch the struggle unfold, but did not push her.
“So I’m not losing my mind,” Ella concluded.
Paris laughed. “The transition feels that way. It’s the opposite, in fact. You’re coming to your senses.”
“Then I’m ready,” Ella said despite all appearances indicating otherwise. “Whatever is left to tell me. Please, tell me now,” she said, swallowing. Despite Paris’s response, Ella wasn’t comforted by the idea of her experiences being a transition. So far it had been frightening and painful, and if she was able to choose, she wanted to suffer it all at once.
She couldn’t stand another second of thinking there was more to learn.
“You’ve noticed the prosperity here,” Paris said, “we’re a small civilization growing so quickly and with so many resources, people hardly know how to celebrate it. No war and barely any crime. Everyone that finally makes it out of the curse and remembers the war just wants peace. There is only one lasting threat to all of this. Maybe by now you’ve guessed what that is.”
“Peter,” Ella replied, remembering Jackson’s first words when she’d broken him out of his own curse, an incident that puzzled her even more now. She wondered why his had been different from the rest, why it had settled so imperfectly on him when the rest were locked unsuspectingly into its maze.
Paris nodded. “We’ve been waiting for someone like you to make it out,” she said. “You may not remember, not consciously, and not right now, but you knew Peter, and we think you know where he is.”
Adrift still in the cloud of her mind, Ella was beyond bewilderment or surprise.
“I don’t remember anything,” she said as if with such an admission they might relinquish her. This felt like a silly play and Ella could only try and imagine what words might let her leave the stage and sit in the dark of the audience. She felt like she’d taken on a part someone else had written.
“You’ve been trapped in the Eating Ocean for a decade. You’ll remember with time,” the Empress said. “They all do.”
The Eating Ocean. So that’s what they called it?
Ella stared down at the waters under her feet and waded out of them.
A guard walked in, returning from the errand Paris had sent him on with a towel. Ella took it and held it to her chest as the water dribbled out of her shoes and onto the floor.
Paris and Hollow inspected her reaction, or the lack thereof, Paris suggesting again that she get some rest in her room, and that a medical attendant would be in to address her wound again soon.
