Chapter 32: Throwing Darts in Lovers Eyes

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In a land with no ocean, the sound of waves lapping against the shore stretched across the town swathed in darkness. The train rolled into a station with a dry-bed river snaking through a golf course behind it. Isabella found herself rising when she heard the familiar song of the fox’s cry. If the fox was here, it might have a way out. Maybe. It was worth a shot; she didn’t have a lot of other options.

Couldn’t be couldn’t be couldn’t be-

And so she left the train, and stepped onto the blank asphalt lit by orange street lamps. It was the only light beneath the starless, moonless sky. The sound of the fox led her behind the train tracks, into the dry river bed, which she followed through the golf course. Street lamps rose from the green like tall, proud trees, thoroughly out of place but keeping it lit. The river bed led up a lush emerald hill towards a lodge at the crest. She found the arctic fox waiting for her at the top. It scampered towards her, mewling and running around her.

Isabella bent down and picked the fox up. It squirmed in her hands, but she held it tight against her chest. This thing wasn’t getting away from her again. “Listen, you,” she said, keeping its jaws clamped shut, “I don’t know where this is or what I’m doing here, but clearly you’re involved in it somehow. Now I want you to show me what it is I’m supposed to do. Clear?”

She had no idea if the fox could understand her, but it yipped and then licked her hands. She put it on the ground, and it led her down the hill on the opposite side.

Can’t be can’t be-

They walked through a small town of colonial houses. Everywhere, orange light hung from lamps, piercing an otherwise impenetrable darkness. Finally, it led her to somewhere she’d seen before: the town square, with small shops and old buildings and a very old wooden church painted white. A group of people stood in a circle before the church as it burned. A human screamed from the center of the pyre, a young man with a smooth, low voice crying in agony. The others joined hands in a circle, warming themselves around the blaze.

I’m not here I’m not here I’m not here-

Isabella ran forward, and one member of the circle slipped out of it and faced her.

For a moment, she thought it was Lacy. But then she saw the eyes, saw the inverted pattern, and realized it was the Other One. She wore a crimson red dress that matched her lipstick, her hair worn tall and teased, her high heels narrowing the gap between them by a few inches. She walked towards Isabella, who in turn slowed her walk and drew her sword.

The Other One stopped with two feet between them. The fox sat itself on the yellow lines in the black pavement beneath their feet. “Hello again, beautiful,” the Other One said.

“What are you doing?” Isabella hissed.

“Making it so we can be together. I’m sure I haven’t realized it yet, so I’ll have to force my way in so I’ll finally realize what I’m supposed to do.”

“What does any of that mean?” Isabella said, her sword drawn but not raised.

“It means I’ll be there soon,” the Other One said.

“You’re an elf, I’ve worked out that much,” Isabella said. “But what I don’t get is why you look like Lacy, why you act like you and her are the same person.”

The Other One laughed, her white pupils expanding as she threw her head back. “I’m an elf, am I? It goes without saying that baseless assumptions often lead to untold agony and experiments with mescaline.”

“... What?”

“Mescaline is a psychotropic found in certain types of cacti-”

“Not what I meant!”

“So then what did you mean? What is it that you want, Isabella? If this was all over, who would you be?”

She’d be… She’d… She’d be the person who was finally home after the long journey. She’d be the hero back from the quest able to enjoy a life of peace and quiet now that the world was saved. She’d have completed her mission. And after that…, “I… I…”

“You what?”

I’m not here I’m not here I’m not I’m not I’m not-

No. I am.

I am here. I’ve always been here. I never really left in the first place, not all the way. All it needed was to tug on the rope and everything I built fell apart, like none of it mattered. I’m back exactly where I was. This is reality. This is my reality.

The levees in her mind broke like wet kindling, and her knees buckled. World-Carver pressed into the ground and kept her propped up, supporting most of her weight. She pivoted, and she swung World-Carver, and she desperately hoped it could take her home.

Nothing.

“That won’t work this far out here in the Liminal Void. Maybe if you still had a foot in your homeworld, but you don’t anymore,” the Other One said. “And you still haven’t answered my question.”

“What would I do if I wasn’t doing this?” Isabella said, the words foreign to her ears.

“Yes.”

“If my parents hadn’t died, and I hadn’t spent those days and days and days shaking in the cold, all alone, waiting for someone to find me because I was too dead inside to move my body on my own?”

“Yes.”

“If I hadn’t fallen into the Pale, hadn’t nearly frozen to death there for months, training with a magical weapon, hoping beyond hope the elves wouldn’t come for me?”

“Yes.”

The icy memories ran up her arms and settled in her heart, freezing it in place for a hideous moment, and in that moment came clarity. “I’d be dead,” Isabella said, the realization lifting a weight off of her. “I wouldn’t have made it if I didn’t have something to live for. Even if that was a mission I didn’t understand or believe in.”

The Other One pursed her lips and shook her head. “That’s no way to live.”

“And what the hell do you recommend?! What the hell do you know about living? I’m not even sure you’re real.”

“I’m as real as the world wants me to be,” the Other One said as ashes fell from the black abyss, tainted snow from the Void.

And then, pure frustration carried Isabella’s arms in a carving motion, her sword hacking at the air. The Other One vanished.

Something tapped on her shoulder from behind. Isabella yelped, pivoted, and found the Other One behind her, smiling brightly with too-white teeth. She vanished, and to Isabella’s side appeared a copy of her. And another. And another, another, another, another-

Everywhere was Lacy’s face, contorted reflections betraying a horrifying intent.

Isabella screamed, until everything, the Church, the street, the fire, the town and all the buildings, and every version of Lacy cracked and shattered like glass and fell apart into the Liminal Void.

When she woke up, she and the fox stood on the shores of the Pale.

Back where she’d begun, Isabella screamed.