Page 79 of Seven Oars
Beads of cold sweat rolled down Rosamma’s neck. She pressed against the folding panel, listening to the footsteps as they entered the Bridge.
Then stopped.
He was here. She felt his presence on the other side of the flimsy partition.
Time slowed, but not her heartbeat.
He knew exactly where she was.
Trapped.
A swirling, palpable awareness of him engulfed Rosamma. She felt him breathe without hearing a sound.
He was going to pull that door open now.
Now. He was going to… He would…
She waited.
The footsteps resumed, a heavy man with a light tread.
Like smoke sucked away by an exhaust fan, the fog of awareness vanished. She rested her forehead against the door.
Once more, she was delivered from evil.How many more reprieves did she have left before her time was up?
She shook her head, refusing to think about the future.
Expecting to see cleaning supplies—unused, of course—or perhaps another headless body, Rosamma slowly turned around.
But she beheld neither.
She was standing in a fairly large octagonal room. Pieces of metal shelving and discarded equipment cluttered the floor, piled up everywhere. Wall coverings draped over seven of the eight sides; the eighth contained the door.
The room was cozy in a claustrophobic, burrow-like way and smelled, not unpleasantly, of dust.
Rosamma picked her way around the junk, moving deeper inside. She found a switch on the wall and flipped it, expecting lights.
Instead, the wall coverings—no, not coverings, but window shades—began to roll up. Slowly, silently, they wound up, inch by inch, revealing the Universe beyond. It was brighter, closer, and more magnificent than she’d ever seen. When the shades finally rose all the way, she stood surrounded by cosmos.
In a daze, she approached one window and placed her palms on the reinforced glass. The proximity to space was immediate, as if she had stepped outside without actually doing so. She now was, truly, next to the stars.
“Hello, world,” she whispered, pressing her face to the window.
A myriad of stars winked against the black backdrop of the endless sky, welcoming her.
The beauty of the Universe and its enormity awed Rosamma and calmed her. So little to see, yet so much. A distant part of her brain marveled at its own capacity to be amazed, still, after all the things she had endured.
And she was amazed, blindingly so.
She peered out, and the stars and planets, arranged in precise and intricate patterns, peered back: cold, silent, eternal.
The sky was deeply, elementally black and so vast, it took her breath away. She felt insignificant, lost, and very alone… yet connected. She was a part of this vastness, a child born of its very fabric.
“I am here,” she whispered.
Her breath fogged up the glass that both separated and protected her from the big, silent world beyond.
“I’m a part of you.”
