41
MY STOMACH DROPS AND I FEEL GIDDY AND SICK all at once. I grip the rope as tightly as I can, wondering, as the river ejects us, how long is this rope, and will I have the strength to hold on if it doesn’t break?
The rope runs forever, and when it finally ends, it nearly pulls my arms off. We swing under the falls like an anchor. Water pummels me so hard, I wonder if it’s rinsing me of my skin. Somehow, even though all of my senses are engulfed with icy torrents and I cannot see him, I can feel Angus moving beside me.
The downpour ceases for a moment as we pass into a cave behind the falls. We dangle, two keys on a chain—thirty? fifty? feet above a dark pool. Angus kicks, making it harder to hold on. With a sickening clutch of my gut, I realize that my arms encircle his neck. After a moment though, he goes still, and we sway like a pair of lovers, slow dancing.
I draw back my head a notch and let out a gurgled shriek. Angus’s eyes bulge, the black pupils like ticks on a cornflower. His tongue looks like a bitten plum with red juice running out the sides.
He was trying to pull the rope around his body.
But he only made it as far as his neck.
I am hugging a corpse.
Even in death, Angus manages to terrorize me. I recoil as much as I can. Every fiber in me wants to put as much space between myself and Angus as I can, but the only place to go is down. I nearly laugh at the irony. That the end of my journey should be at the end of hemp, but not hanged.
Even if my arms could hang on longer, the rest of me refuses. As my grip begins to slip, I know for certain that this is my moment of reckoning.
An image of Father holding out a plate of suns flashes through my mind. And Andy, crooking her pinkie at me. And West, with light from the campfire dancing around his face, who will never know how much I love him.
You may have me now, Fate. I am ready.
? ? ?
The world speaks no more.
My body hangs, suspended in some buoyant medium. It drowns out my senses until all that remains is a single note. An A for acceptance.
I cling to that silvery strain, following it to the source. A violin. But not just any violin. I know that voice—her highs, her lows, and her cranky D-string. My vision clears.
Before me, a man plays Lady Tin-Yin, doing the Paganini as easily as if he were whistling. His wrist trembles expertly as he draws out the last note. Father!
He puts down the violin when he sees me. I rush over and squeeze him tightly, for I can’t lose him again. My tears pour out. He smells like I remember, of ginger and cedar shavings.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I say, blubbering all over his small but sturdy frame.
He pats my back. “I know, daughter.”
Then he pulls me away from him. I drink in every detail of his face. He looks younger than I remember, with neatly combed hair, a smooth forehead, and only a few creases at the corners of his eyes. His cheeks are tight, marked by one dot under his watermelon-seed eyes.
“Where have you been?” I choke out.
“I have been with you,” he says in his quiet voice. “Remember what we learned about the fireflies?”
My mind drifts back to a warm July night, in New York. “You caught a firefly in your hand. You showed me that the glow is actually on the lower abdomen, where the firefly can’t see it.”
He nods. “We carry around the light of our loved ones who have passed. It is they who light the path for us.”
“Passed?” I gasp, beginning to cry again. Father’s really dead. That means I must be dead, too.
His own dark eyes grow luminous and he stretches his shoulders back. “I am proud of my Snake daughter.”
He looks up, slowly letting go of my hand. Cirro cumulus clouds fan out, like a knife spread them across the sky.
I start to panic. “Father, don’t leave me, I still need you,” I plead. The threads of his worn gray suit disappear under my fingers like smoke. “Come back!” I scream.
The echoes of my cries ring in my ears. But Father is gone. And I’m alone in the world once again, only this world is not the one I remember. I am standing on a floor of white marble wearing the dress I wore that very dark day, the one washed so many times that the flowers had faded.
Have I died? I scream but no one and nothing responds now, not even my own echoes. Maybe I have gone to hell, for Ty Yorkshire, for Angus. Maybe hell is not fire and brimstone, but a place of loneliness.
I collapse onto the marble and sob.
Something warm and wet wedges itself under my cheek, pushing its furry face into mine and nuzzling until I open my eyes.
It’s a rabbit.
He lies down beside me. The black of his magnificent coat invites me to pet him. I lose my fingers in his fur, stroking its silkiness until I feel calm again.
The rabbit rises onto his hind legs, regarding me steadily. He’s as tall as a horse, with glittering eyes and sleek ears. I climb onto his back, and knot my fingers in his fur.
His muscles flex and release as he stretches out his legs. And then, with a mighty leap, we shoot into the sky.