Fading Ripples
In which Noah takes a walk through the future with his guide and says goodbye to everyone before fading.
“Oh, hello” She says to the dark outside the stable as she leaves the half full bucket on the floor. “I am your psychopomp. I have been looking for you for a long time. I think.”
Her blond hair is long and braided into a plait, her arms are strong from working on the farm for so many years and her hooves are hidden in the comfortable shoes that were dreamt for her long ago and that she wears whenever people might see her. She furrows her brow, confused.
“I think” She continues, not very sure of how to actually continue. “I was supposed to guide you, to take you somewhere. A long time ago. But I could never find where you were.”
“I have always been here, in this place” The shadows respond. And now she sees that the shadows have blond hair and pale skin like her. Blond hair, pale skin and a smudged face. “I have always been on the line. I can’t really leave it. But I got really good at not being there when you looked. I haven’t always been here, in this time. It’s the first time I’ve come down so far I think” Then he laughs and it sounds like the ringing of a small bell in the dark. “I guess it’s also the last time too. I’ve never seen an older me before.”
“I was supposed to do my job.” She argues, turning from serene to angry in the space of a second. He wants to laugh again because he sees so much of his best friend in that anger that it hurts. “And you wouldn’t let me.”
“I had to fix it.”
“It was fixed many yeas ago.” She counters, anger deflating a little.
“Ah, my bad. I guess I blinked.” He smiles ruefully, scratching his cheek in an absent gesture. “It’s hard when everything is a circle.”
Opal just sighs before extending her hand. Noah takes it.
They walk.
“So, who was your first kiss Blue?”
The question is as random as all the other questions Henry has thrown at them from where he lays sprawled in the back seat of the Hog. Blue has her feet up on the dashboard while Gansey drives the motor-less Camaro duplicate away from the sunset.
“What sort of question is that Cheng? You were there when it happened: Gansey was my first kiss. When he died and survived my curse got broken, remember?”
They’ve been driving for what seems like an eternity but has only been four weeks. They drive without maps, taking them where the roads may take them. Twists and turns and no way of knowing where they will end up. Camping under the stars wherever they see fit, driving into the night until there is no road. But sometimes there are no curves, no twists and turns, just straight asphalt for as long as the eye can see and in those moments Blue is sure they are following a (the? their?) ley line.
“That must have been pretty horrible, not being able to kiss anyone.” Henry’s face scrunches, his hand extending so that RoboBee can land on it. “Would you have kissed someone if you were sure they weren’t your true love? I mean, that would have been safe right?”
Blue snorts, not as bothered by the question as she knew her past self would have been. Her past self had a lot of things to worry about and little time or patience for these things. “No, I couldn’t risk it. Just cause I wasn’t in love with them then doesn’t mean that they weren’t my true love. I didn’t want to risk killing anyone.” Her fingers brush lightly against Gansey’s hand and she still can’t believe she can have this. That even though Glendower had been a lie and there had been no favour he is still here beside her. Alive and breathing and in a hideous orange polo shirt. Gansey takes his eyes off the endlessly straight road and looks her way. They share a smile while Cheng grins behind them.
“What about you Ganseyboy? Any juicy first kiss stories you’re keeping from us?”
Blue thinks she sees a flicker besides Henry when she looks into the mirror. Something that her mind tells her must have always been there when she knows there was nothing there a second ago. But there’s nothing there now. There never was anything else there, except Henry and RoboBee.
It must have been the sun, she tells herself. And even though it’s still August, she shivers.
“I have to admit sometimes I got sidetracked. I’m sorry about that. It wasn’t always about the mission. Or maybe it was. Some things felt more important than others, but I still had to do them.” Noah explains, slowing down. They’d left the Barns behind quite a while ago and now there was only forest and darkness as far as the eye could see. “If I had been greedier, I would have abandoned the mission and spent all my time with them instead.”
“And was the mission really more important than that?” Opal asks, stopping by his side without letting go of his hand. “Was finding Glendower really that important?”
Noah began laughing and he pressed a hand to his stomach even though he did not need to. He took deep breathes that were also not necessary and he wondered when in time he was, that it was so easy to pretend to be alive. “I was the sacrifice.” He whispered finally, like it was a secret. “I was favoured by the ley line. So I used the ley line to undo the damage we had done. That was the mission.”
They began walking once more.
“It was never about Glendower.”
And Opal did not understand, cause in the stories it was always about Glendower.
Adam still scries sometimes, in the dingy bathroom he shares with his roommate at Princeton. There are simple questions he can ask the ley line: he asks how his friends are, how Ronan and Opal are doing at the Barns, where Blue, Gansey and Cheng are now. He asks after the people at 300 Fox Way and almost always receives an answer from one of the women there. He asks about his parents, although not very often. Sometimes when he is worried and tired and he knows Ronan is already asleep and he doesn’t want to wake him he asks for something soothing: rivers and streams and trees.
But most times he simply asks for the weather forecast after he’s showered in the mornings.
He knows that now it’s barely a glimpse through a dirty window when it used to be a panoramic view of the future and the past. He does it to keep in practice, to honour Persephone’s memory and to not forget that part of himself that was Cabeswater’s eyes and hands. He had asked the new forest, once Ronan had dreamt it almost two years ago, if it would like for him to assume his old role. He had not liked the idea, but he liked the idea of being in debt with the forest after it had saved Gansey even less. And yet, to his surprise this new forest had whispered a laugh into his deaf ear before mumbling in English: ‘there is nothing we must keep watch of, so we need no eyes. There is no danger we must take action against, so we need no hands. There is no evil here that needs to be vanquished, Magus. There is only peace. As it should be.’
He had nodded, and Ronan, Opal and he had spent the day there doing nothing but enjoying the peace.
Sometimes when he scries he gets very cold and he doesn’t understand why. He thinks it’s happened before, so he is not scared. He remembers scrying in a cave and Blue and Maura were there. No, not Maura. He saw Maura, when he scried. He saw her and Blue was there and so was he, so it was safe. Three is always a good number to have when you were scrying dangerously. He knows it’s a safe number.
Him, Blue and Maura.
For some reason, the water trapped in the bathroom sink shows him an image he hasn’t asked for: a red Mustang covered by leaves, dust and pollen. He thinks there might be words written on the car, but he’s unsure. He doesn’t know what to do with this image. He doesn’t recognize it but guesses he will see it at some point today or tomorrow. Perhaps next week.
So he splashes the water until the car ripples away and waits for it to settle once more. Then he looks into this afternoon to see if he should pack an umbrella.
He should really talk to whoever is in charge of the maintenance in these dorms, or maybe try to fix the heater himself, cause it’s starting to get ridiculous.
“I never thanked him, you know?” Noah said as he walked hand in hand with Opal through the forest. Girl and boy, side by side taking a stroll through the night. Dream and ghost, walking together for the first and last time.
“What did you want to thank him for?” She asks, cocking her head to the side like a bird.
“Letting me be avenged. I should have stopped it, really. More blood was only feeding the demon; making it stronger. But at that moment I didn’t care. I remembered too much what it was like to be alive. I had forgotten how good it felt to have friends around me. No, that’s a lie. I had not forgotten because I had not had it. Not in life. I only had a memory of what it felt like to be loved by all of them. To be honest I don’t know if I was remembering the past or the future. I just knew that they loved me.” He grinned at her. “It was super nice.”
“Yes, it is.” She says smiling inwardly.
They continue walking for a few minutes. Or perhaps a few seconds. Maybe a few days. It’s hard to tell in the darkness. It’s impossible to tell on the ley line.
“I don’t think I had that with Whelk, you know?” The question is rhetorical because he suspects she already knows everything he might have to tell her. “I knew I couldn’t, but I still wish I had been able to save him. Although I don’t know if it’s because I cared about him or because he made everything more difficult.”
They walk, and the darkness becomes darker before it begins to brighten.
“If my blood made the demon, then his made it even stronger.”
“You know what I don’t get? That building you were living in with Gansey. Montmorne? The big factory one. It had an extra room didn’t it?” Ashley asks, placing a hand over her bulging stomach as she sits at the kitchen table. “Why didn’t you guys rent it out? Or just have Adam move in.”
“That’s because back then Adam had his morals so far up his ass they tickled his tonsils every time he coughed.” Ronan growled affectionately as he cut more bread. Five years since her now husband had made peace with his brother had given Ashley enough time to figure out that her brother in law was all bark and no bite. At least not to them, although it had taken a while for him to warm up to her. But they got there. Here was exhibit A: he was making her a tuna and cucumber sandwich at two in the morning while Declan went to milk a cow because she had had a craving.
“But didn’t someone use to live there?” Matthew asked, legs dangling from where he sat on the counter. The ruckus of everyone coming downstairs had woken him, although the rest of the house continued to sleep.
“I don’t know; I remember we had a lot of fun throwing things out of the window of that room.” Ronan answered, putting the bread aside and reaching for the vegetable.
“I never pegged Gansey or Adam as the ‘throw things out of the window so they smash’ kind of guys. Then again, you have always been a terrible influence on all those around you.” Declan said as he shuffled into the kitchen with a bucket of fresh milk looking dead on his feet. He sat next to his wife and handed the bucket off to Matthew who transferred the contents into a pot to put on the stove.
Ronan stopped chopping the cucumber for a few seconds, not really sure as to why he had stopped or why he had said we. “It must have been with Blue.” He said slowly, face pinched in concentration trying to chase the memory down. “Yeah, it must have been, I remember I threatened to push her out the window next.” He finishes the sandwich and hands it over to her, accepting a glass of warm milk in return.
“I still think it would have been a good idea to rent the room. If only so you two could have a bit more company.” Ashley says, savouring her sandwich but not willing to drop the subject. Matthew looks around confused, for some reason he’s poured and extra glass of milk. He decides to drink it so it won’t go to waste.
“Nah. Who would want to live there? That room was always fucking freezing.”
“I think I remember you, from before. You use to be there with me when papa summoned me. When he dreamt.” Opal murmurs, trying to recall what it had been like to live in a dream.
“I was. He never recognized me though, I wouldn’t let him. It was dangerous, but there were things I needed to make sure he took. The keys to the Pig, Chainsaw, the night terrors.” He pauses and his face pinches in pain, even though both know he hasn’t felt pain in a long time. “And the wounds on his wrists. I think that was the hardest.”
Opal looks at him and tries not to judge. She is a guide, and nothing more. However, the words easily bring back the image of her father’s crisscrossed arms and she is instantly mad. “Why?”
“Because it happened.” Noah shrugs. “Because I couldn’t risk it not happening. I don’t know how much it would change if it had not happened. Just like I knew I couldn’t have saved Whelk.” He sighs, feeling her glare on him without having to turn. “Gansey always thought I was very good at finding Ronan, but it’s easy to find something when you know where you left it.”
“How did you do it?” Noah can tell she’s still mad. He reckons that Ronan has rubbed off on her too much: having the opportunity to act and not take it is something that does not sit well with either of them. Perhaps she had always been that way, even when she was a mere dream.
“I always dreamt of ravens when I was alive.” He answers. “I was always dreaming of ravens. I thought it was just silly school pride, but it turns out I had been leaving myself a message. Or using myself to learn how to leave messages. This me, I mean. Ghost me, moving up the line to when I was still alive. It was easier like that. It was practise.”
Opal hums in agreement. Spiralling time and the whispering of the dead do not faze her.
“I think” And there he pauses for a long time trying to put his thoughts into order. “I think I had not died yet, when I told him to dream Cabeswater. I remember he was very young. I was scared someone so small could not dream a place so large.”
“But papa did. That’s why I couldn’t find you before. I was trapped there before you had actually died. So I couldn’t find your soul to guide you.” Opal purses her lip, angry at him once more. “I think that’s cheating.”
He smiles at her. “Exactly.”
Ronan has gotten very good at dreaming after so many years. Even without Opal being in them he finds no difficulty in plucking magical objects from them as he would a plum from one of the trees in the orchard. He can direct them easily as well: take a stroll, pet the night terror on the head, find that part to fix the tractor that broke last week, grab and go.
But sometimes it’s harder and he has no idea why. When he wakes up he can never remember the dream, just that it was familiar. He thinks it’s a recurring dream because he always brings the same thing back, but it could also be hundreds of different dreams that just end the same. Sometimes he thinks he remembers glimpses of them: they are at Nino’s piled close together in a booth although there is more than enough space available, they are in the Pig and Blue is squashed against his side in the middle seat with a hand resting on the empty one, he’s at church with his brothers and Matthew is sitting too far away to be a coincidence. He doesn’t know why they feel like the same dream. He simply knows they are.
When he wakes up with something solid in his hand and no recollection of his dream it barely takes him a moment to figure out what it is.
“What’d you get?” Adam mumbles into his shoulder, his voice sleepy and his eyes still closed. His head is resting in the crook of Ronan’s neck and he’s lazily hugging his arm. Ronan doesn’t know how Adam manages to wake up every time he brings something back, but after six years he doesn’t question it anymore.
“Same stupid dream, can’t remember it.” Ronan murmurs, carefully placing the object on the nightstand before snuggling back under the covers.
“We should try to figure that out Ro. It’s starting to get weird.” Adam noses his neck, changing his position slightly to get comfortable once more. “And we’re running out of shelves to put the snow globes on.”
“I think the hardest part was not being in phase with everyone.”
“In phase?” Opal asks curiously.
“When they met me I had been dead for seven years, but I had been running up and down the ley line for much longer. I already knew them, already loved them. I had already kissed Blue before Gansey knew who she was. I had scried with Adam and raced with Ronan before they had met each other. I had saved Gansey before he had died that first time.”
They continue walking, straight into the woods, as far as feet that do not need to touch the ground can take them.
“It was hard, to remember what came first. Where and when and who I manifested always depended on the strength of the ley line so I didn’t live the events in the same order.” He bites his lip, always walking forward. “Well, I guess I didn’t really live them, did I? I had been long dead by then.”
“It sounds very complicated.” She concedes.
“Thinking about it now, I think the most complicated thing was getting the tenses right in my head. Circular time is great and all that, but it makes being grammatically correct a bitch.”
Calla had managed to get the bathroom for herself that morning, and that in itself was nothing short of a miracle. She finishes putting her hair in a professional white-streaked bun and begins putting her make up on before the prickle of eyes on the back of her head becomes too irritating to ignore.
“I don’t know why you’re so thankful, but you are welcome. Now, is there something you need or can I use the toilet in peace?” She asks the reflection of the toilet in the mirror. There is a flicker, as she knew there would be, but it’s too faint to make out even with her full attention on it.
With a sigh she turns around, facing the offending porcelain. This time without the mirror to help enhance and focus the spirit is all but invisible, but she manages to keep her conscious locked on it out of pure will and stubbornness.
“Again, if there is anything you need I will be happy to help sort it out, but I would really like to get to work today.” Despite her words she can feel that whatever has decided to take residency on the only toilet of a house full of psychics has not budged. She’s irritated enough to consider going downstairs to get the ingredients needed for a ritual that will help whatever it is pass on, but she doesn’t need to be psychic to know that the moment she opens that door there will be a queue of women ready to fight for their shower. So instead she sighs and turns around again and finishes her make up. “Fine, stay if you want. You’re welcome here for as long as you wish to stay.”
And with that the presence is gone. Calla knows that if she had been someone else, a bit more sceptic and a bit less psychic, she would have questioned if there had actually been something there. But she’s not stupid, so she doesn’t.
For some reason she’s screwed up her eye shadow and it takes her longer than usual to erase that smudge on her eye.
“When I died, I saw it all happening at once. As if time were all around me, showing me everything. But now,…” He lets the words hang, a sigh in the air. Finally, they stop when they reach the clearing. Nothing has changed, as he knew it would not have, and he wonders yet again when this disregard for normal had become the norm. “I know I have been dead for a long time, but all I can remember is this walk. I remember the things I did, but I don’t remember doing them. Just that they got done.”
“They don’t remember you doing them either.” Opal points out, frowning. She clutches his hand with more force and her body trembles. The knowledge hurts, this secret feeling too big and too unfair for a lonely soul to keep. “Do you want to say goodbye to them?” She asks, berating herself for not asking sooner and knowing that they have walked too far to go back now.
“Don’t worry, I already have. I just think it hasn’t happened yet.” Noah smiles at her and finally lets go of her hand. “Thank you, for bringing me here. Will you be alright going back?”
“Yes. Once I leave the task will be complete. Your circle will twist until it is a line and then again until it is a dot. Then you will be gone.” The words come out as if she had recited them even though she has no memory of doing so. She pauses and her face falls. Understanding of what will happen, what has already happened, weighing too heavily on her shoulders. Opal lets a tear escape before surging forward and burying her face in his rugged Aglionby sweater and letting out a loose sob. “I am sorry, that you had to make this sacrifice.”
“I was already dead; it’s not like I could change that.” Noah puts his arms around her and marvels at the warmth the contact provides. Once more he wonders where he is in time that life seems so tantalizingly close. “Plus, just because they don’t remember doesn’t mean that I will forget that they loved me when they knew me.”
“If I could remember you then I would love you too.” Opal’s lip is sticking out and she’s still shaking, but she seems to have brazed herself for what is about to happen. What has already happened.
He smiles sadly at her and finally let’s go. “But you won’t. Remember me that is. When I leave I will be gone and not even a dream can change that.” He knows better than to wish that things were different, but at that moment there is nothing he wishes more than to have her guide him back to them. To his friends, although they have moved forward without him. To his life, although it had not been his nor a life for a very long time know. To the simplicity of thinking that one second came after another after another. But he knows that it’s impossible.
“But I would, if I could.” And Noah laughs at her stubbornness, too touched by her words to react any other way. His mission is complete, the demon is gone, his blood has disappeared from the ley line and he no longer has its favour. So he keeps laughing, enjoying these last moments with his guide before solving the next mystery. When he’s finished he sends another toothy grin and a one handed wave her way before steeling himself and turning around.
Then, Noah gets into the car. His car. He takes a bite of the hamburger that had been laying on the dashboard for minutes, or days or centuries. It tastes delicious, as only fast food will taste when you’re starving. And he has been starving for a very long time.
He puts the key in the ignition and turns it. When he looks back there is no one with him in the clearing.
“Excelsior”
He presses the gas and the car surges forward into the light.
There’s a page in Gansey’s journal that he doesn’t remember writing. Or he does, but he doesn’t remember why he did it. It must have been important, back then. Although in retrospect it had served no purpose. None of his journal served a purpose, because Glendower had been dead all along.
He supposed finding a dead body had been a traumatic experience. It being on the ley line must have somehow helped his younger self process what had happened: adding it to the mystery of the sleeping king as a coping mechanism.
Noah Czerny is connected to the ley line because he was killed on it.
Sometimes, when he’s about to put a name and a face to the voice that began it all. When he’s on the verge of remembering, remembering, remembering. Remembering why Glendower had been so important, remembering why his obsession had taken hold of him so fiercely and destructively. Remembering how if not for the quest to find a sleeping king they would not have discovered or learnt or mastered the magic that defeated the demon. How he would not have met his friends, how he would not have loved them so completely. Enough to sacrifice himself for them. Always for them. Because of Glendower.
‘Coincidence?’ He thinks to himself. Cause it was probably not.
When he’s finally shaken from his musings he finds a muffin on the table next to him and he smiles. Blue must have left it there, because Henry would have told RoboBee to pick the chocolate chips from it so he could have them later as a snack. Once again, as has happened for many years now, he is struck by how lucky he is to be alive. How improbable it was that the series of events that were needed for his heart to start beating anew not once, but twice, occurred. And even ten years later he still wonders how. He wishes he had had some sort of warning.
When he’s a second away from remembering that voice and that face and that name it slips away. Like a silver fish swimming downstream. Like a black raven taking flight.
Like a red mustang driving towards the sunset and beyond.
