Read Online In the Valley of the Kings: Stories by Terrence Holt - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Terrence Holt
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standing. I have no legs.
“You are not here.”
Aurora ’s voice whispers of numbers, teeth gleaming in sunlight, a sidelong sadness in her eyes. Her eyes were dark, sharp flecks in them shining. Her hand reaches up, warm across the place where my face had been.
“You have no voice.”
On the horizon, gulls wheel over the hull of a dragger.
“Listen to me now, while there is time.”
The mouth moves, and I hear her voice—deeply, as if it murmured in my belly.
“I cannot always save you. But I can tell you, if it will help you, why you are here.”
The sadness tells me it will not help.
“You were dying. Your heart was rotten; you were eaten away. We offered you life; you took it. You wished for this. Here in the Ring is the life we gave you.”
I remember. I remember the face, the voice that Aurora has taken. I remember the decision we made. And the promises they made us.
They had not lied. But I had not known how it would be.
“We did not lie. There is no cure. Your body is gone.”
I remember this day. I remember this beach where we came to decide; I remember the graveyard we chose: I see it now on the hill on the point, the stones shining white in the sun. I remember how she struggled to push the chair in the sand; how the oxygen burned in the back of my throat, thin and ineffectual in the wind. I remember the dullness of my thoughts, how little surprised I was at how little I cared.
I remember the weakness. I remember the fear. I remember the way time shortened, the shortness of breath, the sinking within me each day at sunset. I remember it all, and all I remember hollows and fades. I am falling.
“You remember the bargain we made.”
I remember how light the price seemed.
“The process is slow.”
I remember our tour of the long room of tanks, the small pink masses that jerked on the ends of their cords.
“We have kept our promise. Now you keep yours. Help us, and let us help you.”
I have one wish, but no words form: only, in the hollow center of me, a memory of desire.
The face turns toward me, draws near, filling my sight. The warm hand slips from where my face once was and almost I can smell, almost I can taste and feel the warmth there. Then her eyes open, too close to mine, not sidelong now, too dark, too deep, and the flecks of light are the stars, the Ring an endless road, and Aurora, beside me, eclipses the stars.
The valves close; collars spin, decouple, and with a rupture, with pain, she is gone. But I remember.
I fall, the ice falls, the Ring revolves, and still I remember.
HOW LONG I will remember what Aurora has given me, I cannot say. Already one revolution has passed, and none of it vanishes: the world grows clearer. And still clearer. I wonder where it will end. But though the darkness has achieved a new transparency, though the stars and Saturn and the ice all grow brighter, and I among them also almost whole, and I feel myself almost uninterrupted, with a past that reaches back now almost as far as the Ring goes onward, there is within me still some flaw. I feel it there: an emptiness still at center, an omission, some failure of memory or comprehension that keeps me somehow still apart, still adrift, still insubstantial: still, I fall.
These words I form against the silence, they will not stop. They slice me fine, interminably articulating time. A word, a thought, a thought, a moment passing on the Ring, and then another word, another thought, another moment and I am still here, still falling among the stars, still burning, still thinking, still here, still turning on the Ring.
I know now why the gift they gave was not only life, but its forgetting.
AURORA DOES NOT lie. I need only wait, and I will be returned to a life much like the one I knew. It is only a matter of time.
I listen in the darkness, and hear the voice of Saturn singing time, the low murmur that pulls so deep within me that I feel as though my life is anchored there, tethered,
“You are not here.”
Aurora ’s voice whispers of numbers, teeth gleaming in sunlight, a sidelong sadness in her eyes. Her eyes were dark, sharp flecks in them shining. Her hand reaches up, warm across the place where my face had been.
“You have no voice.”
On the horizon, gulls wheel over the hull of a dragger.
“Listen to me now, while there is time.”
The mouth moves, and I hear her voice—deeply, as if it murmured in my belly.
“I cannot always save you. But I can tell you, if it will help you, why you are here.”
The sadness tells me it will not help.
“You were dying. Your heart was rotten; you were eaten away. We offered you life; you took it. You wished for this. Here in the Ring is the life we gave you.”
I remember. I remember the face, the voice that Aurora has taken. I remember the decision we made. And the promises they made us.
They had not lied. But I had not known how it would be.
“We did not lie. There is no cure. Your body is gone.”
I remember this day. I remember this beach where we came to decide; I remember the graveyard we chose: I see it now on the hill on the point, the stones shining white in the sun. I remember how she struggled to push the chair in the sand; how the oxygen burned in the back of my throat, thin and ineffectual in the wind. I remember the dullness of my thoughts, how little surprised I was at how little I cared.
I remember the weakness. I remember the fear. I remember the way time shortened, the shortness of breath, the sinking within me each day at sunset. I remember it all, and all I remember hollows and fades. I am falling.
“You remember the bargain we made.”
I remember how light the price seemed.
“The process is slow.”
I remember our tour of the long room of tanks, the small pink masses that jerked on the ends of their cords.
“We have kept our promise. Now you keep yours. Help us, and let us help you.”
I have one wish, but no words form: only, in the hollow center of me, a memory of desire.
The face turns toward me, draws near, filling my sight. The warm hand slips from where my face once was and almost I can smell, almost I can taste and feel the warmth there. Then her eyes open, too close to mine, not sidelong now, too dark, too deep, and the flecks of light are the stars, the Ring an endless road, and Aurora, beside me, eclipses the stars.
The valves close; collars spin, decouple, and with a rupture, with pain, she is gone. But I remember.
I fall, the ice falls, the Ring revolves, and still I remember.
HOW LONG I will remember what Aurora has given me, I cannot say. Already one revolution has passed, and none of it vanishes: the world grows clearer. And still clearer. I wonder where it will end. But though the darkness has achieved a new transparency, though the stars and Saturn and the ice all grow brighter, and I among them also almost whole, and I feel myself almost uninterrupted, with a past that reaches back now almost as far as the Ring goes onward, there is within me still some flaw. I feel it there: an emptiness still at center, an omission, some failure of memory or comprehension that keeps me somehow still apart, still adrift, still insubstantial: still, I fall.
These words I form against the silence, they will not stop. They slice me fine, interminably articulating time. A word, a thought, a thought, a moment passing on the Ring, and then another word, another thought, another moment and I am still here, still falling among the stars, still burning, still thinking, still here, still turning on the Ring.
I know now why the gift they gave was not only life, but its forgetting.
AURORA DOES NOT lie. I need only wait, and I will be returned to a life much like the one I knew. It is only a matter of time.
I listen in the darkness, and hear the voice of Saturn singing time, the low murmur that pulls so deep within me that I feel as though my life is anchored there, tethered,
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