Page 64 of The Quiet
“Then why come back? Why not tell me?” Ella replied.
“We did. We have. We will. Several times.”
They watched each other in silence for a long time before Ella felt what Jackson must have felt all his life, the future closing in like a narrow path. As she looked this version of Jackson in the eyes, she could not help but give voice to the obvious and insurmountable barrier.
“You’re a Strike,” she whispered.
“And I owe you everything,” he replied, “I love you, Ella. Even now, the moment you’re waiting in, Jackson has not completely recognized it yet, but he loves you. He loves you for the same reasons that I still do now.”
“What is love if it makes two people so dependent on each other, so– so,” she struggled to capture the world, “trapped and enslaved by each other. Is that really love? To feed on each other, to–” she clenched her fists in her hands, “consume each other?”
“Love so often is as it’s expressed,” Lambspeak replied, calmly. “You cannot define what that looks like, only that it brings you closer to the truth. If you feel trapped, is it not love that traps you. Love is not a destination, but another avenue of travel.”
Ella’s eyes flickered down to the floor at the intrusion of a thought that brought her some relief. She stared at the ground, lacking confidence that she could hide the thought from him, and yet knowing that if she didn’t meet his eyes, he’d know for sure she had a plan.
Taking the risk, she emptied her mind and refocused her attention on the fear, the fear that so often buzzed in the back of her brain, the fear that a future with him stirred.
“Fine,” Ella whispered, and they both watched each other with a firmness that built a certain tension in the room.
His eyes narrowed in the slightest, and by the subtlest flicker in his expression, she knew he suspected something, but had the confidence that he couldn’t see it clearly beyond the fear, the fear that she now understood why he hated.
“I just have one question for you,” she said.
“Anything.”
“Have I changed in the future?” she replied, knowing he could lie if at all he wanted. She had no guarantee that all of this wasn’t a lie after all. “Have I changed so much?”
“No,” Lambspeak replied, with a smile that was surprisingly soft. “But I guess that’s the problem, isn’t it?”
Ella opened her eyes before the flickering thoughts of her plan resurfaced and were exposed to him. Jackson and Paris had both taken seats near her in the present, waiting for her to return from her meditation into another point in time.
“Paris,” Ella asked, “could we get new supplies?”
Paris rose to her feet and sauntered from the room with a smile, “I’ll have it brought up.”
Ella waited until she heard Paris’s shoes completely fade from the hallway. She looked over at Jackson. “How hard is it to avoid him? To not think about the past and the future even?”
“Did you make a deal?” Jackson said.
“No,” Ella said, “he’s transporting us and healing my arm as a favor.”
“And for anything else?” Jackson asked.
“I can’t tell you anything, can I?”
Jackson hesitated, glancing away as if almost hurt by the suggestion. “I’m not sure,” he admitted and looked up at her, “but if there is anything I can do to help—”
“I can’t have him just appear like that,” Ella said. “I just need more control. I need to get to know you, everything I can know about you that can help me. Can you do that?”
“Alright,” he nodded, obviously resisting the urge to ask her what she was planning. He was visibly bothered by the wall she’d just asserted between them. “Ella,” he said, “don’t try and trick him. I don’t know how old the version you met was, but there are worse risks. There could be versions of him out there that are hundreds of years old. He could have discovered how to communicate with the past a thousand years ago in his time and just communicated it to all past versions of himself. Don’t you see? He’s only showing us the versions of himself he wants to. We can never know what he’s really building.”
“What can we know?” Ella said, shaking her head, her words capturing her frustration, awe, exhaustion and confusion from the past few days.
As she looked at him, she doubted her own words, because she still relied on one fact, one undeniable truth. The future was uncertain in so many ways, but still sitting in her room was that metal vial of Amnesia. Its effects were indisputable.
She had no doubt she’d need to rely on Lambspeak in the future. No doubt he knew that, though Ella wasn’t sure when the time would come. Ella would do right by that future version of herself and not make a deal against her.
If she could not keep Lambspeak at bay in the present, she’d always have Amnesia. With a drink of it, she could forget him, and even if it landed her right back where she’d started, she’d still be a version of herself that she recognized.
