Then, please, believe, commanded Raven. Believe!
The drums became thunder — then silence.
Raven howled, Believe!
And Calum was swimming in light.
ON THE VIDEOSCREENS the searchlights swung over the water, the Narrows flowed obliviously along. No structure connected the island to the mainland. No craggy fragments jutted out of Topside Drive, the rest dynamited or concealed. Waves slapped the base of the cliffs on either side. Guardian Bridge had vanished, disappeared — it was gone.
At first the applause came almost tentatively. Gip, alone onstage, waved. People, emboldened by this, cheered. He climbed atop the white trunk and did a little dance, they looked from him to the screens — there was no Guardian Bridge! — and at once the whole park erupted with joy. People whistled and squealed and roared, the crowd thronged, Kellogg and Pearl fell grinning into each other’s arms — their boy was a star! With little inward flicks of his fingertips Gip enticed the crowd’s worship. Yes, he cried. Now you see the truth! Now you truly believe!
And here were the fireworks: the skies came alive with streaks of colour that ruptured in monstrous luminescent spiders of blue, green, red, purple, gold. More went up, great sparkling pinwheels, rockets, and rainbows, the reds volcanic, the whites like bursting stars, aquatic blues unleashed from the sea floor into the heavens. When the sparks fell tinkling down, everyone’s attention returned to the videoscreens.
Raven’s done it, said Wagstaffe. Oh my, said Lanyess. Oh my!
As he came into his unit Sam checked his third watch. The hands were stuck at right angles. Before he could turn on the TV, the phone rang. He picked up. Adine?
But Adine was fumbling her way down the stairwell and onto E Street, where the night air hit her face and the world seemed at once to tumble away and close in. She sensed her neighbours out there engaged in a sort of befuddled dance, moving one person to the next to confirm that, yes, the power was out, what had the illustrationist done, no one knew, they should all go to together to the park and see.
Gip continued to grandstand atop the trunk, ignoring NFLM commands to get down and move offstage. Though few people were watching him now — another burst of pyrotechnics was received with oohs and ahhs. Even his parents failed to notice two Helpers approaching the boy from the wings at a low, menacing crouch.
Hello? said Sam to the empty line. Time’s machine is broken Adine. Hello?
A hand fell upon Adine’s arm and she surprised herself by asking, Debbie?
But no, it was a man, an old man, the hand a gnarled and bony claw. We’re going downtown, he said, the Yellowline’s out, everyone’s walking. Do you need help?
Adine shook her head. No, she said.
But, said the man, can you see?
Yes, she said. I can see.
He released her. Adine sensed him waiting. Out there was darkness, she knew. Though what was the difference between that and this private darkness? Her work seemed so vain now, so misguided and confused. Fug it, she said. And she took off the goggles. No light came searing in. The street was a sludge of dim, shuddery shapes — a crowd, she realized, squinting. People.
What a fantastic lightshow the NFLM are treating us to here tonight, said Wagstaffe. Truly a special night for the city, said Isa Lanyess, and a wonderful way to celebrate. And what an honour for us to share it with all of you, watching at home or in Cinecity.
Hello? said Sam again. No reply. Not even breathing. But the silence was that of a coma, secreting a dreamlife in another world.
The Helpers scooped up Gip and deposited him, squirming and reluctant, into his father’s arms. Wow, champ, said Kellogg, you were amazing. But the joy in the boy’s eyes had dimmed, replaced with a deadened gloss.
From the vacuum in Sam’s phone emerged a voice, echoey and faraway. Hello? it said. Sam’s breath caught in his throat. And the line went dead. Sam sat on his couch with the receiver in his lap. Slowly, he turned to look at the armoire, its doors barred and locked, and listened for any sound within. Nothing. Not yet.
Meanwhile as Adine joined the convoy trooping east from the Zone, and on the roof of the Temple Griggs and Noodles and Magurk cheersed schnappses to a job well done, and Cora dragged Rupe up the inoperative escalator into Blackacres Station, and in his cell in the Temple’s basement Pop hung his head as Havoc — Dack — told him, Enjoy your θtay! and Tragedy/Pea added, You dumb fug, and Olpert and Starx sat numbly watching the fireworks’ reflections shatter in Crocker Pond, and at last the hoodied mob disappeared — back underground? — and Debbie crawled out from the bushes, freed her face from the anorak’s hood, looked across the city and saw the sky was on fire —
ABOVE IT ALL SPUN the Mayor in her tower, around and around and around.
IX
HAT IS WAKING, waking is being born. The sky is pale, not the sky of day or night or dusk or dawn, not clouds, but more a lack of sky. A sky that isn’t there. Or maybe this is what exists behind the sky, now Calum sees what has been there all along. Staggering to his feet he looks up and down the bridge, the road narrows to twin vanishing points in each direction, these distances feel infinite, the horizons look unattainable, as though they’d keep peeling back and away and on forever.
Calum goes to the railing, looks down. Below shrouded in mist might lie a river, if it is a river it disappears into thicker fog beneath the bridge. If it is a river then the river mirrors the sky, which is to say, colourless. If it is a river its surface is still. There is no current. Were Calum to fling his body off the bridge it would fall in silence and hitting the water not make a splash, if there is water, if not it would fall forever, tumbling end over end, a satellite dislodged from orbit in space.
So Calum steps back into the middle of the bridge.
And sits cross-legged on the yellow dividing line, and breathes short hollow breaths. And lays his hands on the knees of his jeans and looks at the palms of his hands, ridged with lines that mean, somehow, fate and love and health and life. He runs the fingers of one hand along the lines of the other. Squeezes the top knuckle of his right thumb. The flesh engorged with what should be blood does not swell purple, and when released no blood retreats, a rosy hue does not return.
Hello, Calum calls. The word disappears: no echo, no trace, it is as if another mouth has pressed to his mouth and eaten the word, swallowed the word.
Was there never a word?
Calum looks at the sky that isn’t quite sky, along the bridge that stretches forever, down at his hands, into the fog that hides what might not be a river.
Hello? says Calum or does he. Does he say then, Hello?
Does he say hello does he not say hello has he not then ever said: hello.
Saturday
What’s a city without its ghosts?
Unknown.
Unknown.
Unknown.
I
ERE WAS THE MORNING barely. Sometime in the waning hours of Friday night, those uncertain moments before dawn, the cloudcover sealed fontanelle-like over the island and snow began to fall. The temperature dropped and when the sun rose it did so with effort, struggling through fog thick as a pelt. Clouds drooped over the island, the sky nuzzled the ground, everything the same dirty white: the air, the thin crust of snow. Where did earth meet atmosphere, there was no telling.