The Thirteenth Tale

REUNION

My bath went some way toward thawing me out, but did nothing to soothe the ache behind my eyes. I gave up all thoughts of working for the rest of the afternoon and crept into bed, pulling the extra covers well up over my ears. Inside I was still shivering. In a shallow sleep I saw strange visions. Hester and my father and the twins and my mother, visions in which everyone had someone else's face, in which everyone was someone else disguised, and even my own face was disturbing to me as it shifted and altered, sometimes myself, sometimes another. Then Aurelius's bright head appeared in my dream: himself, always himself, only himself, and he smiled and the phantoms were banished. Darkness closed over me like water, and I sank to the depths of sleep.

I awoke with a headache, aches in my limbs and my joints and my back. A tiredness that had nothing to do with exertion or lack of sleep weighed me down and slowed my thoughts. The darkness had thickened. Had I slept through the hour of my appointment with Aurelius? The thought nagged at me but only very distantly, and long minutes passed before I could rouse myself to look at my watch. For during my sleep, an obscure sentiment had formed within me-trepidation? nostalgia? excitement?-and it had given rise to a sense of expectation.

The past was returning! My sister was near. There was no doubting it. I couldn't see her, couldn't smell her, but my inner ear, attuned always and only to her, had caught her vibration, and it filled me with a dark and soporific joy.

There was no need to put off Aurelius. My sister would find me, wherever I was. Was she not my twin? In fact, I had half an hour before I was due to meet him at the garden door. I dragged myself heavily from my bed and, too cold and weary to take off my pajamas before dressing, I pulled a thick skirt and sweater on over the top. Bundled up like a child on firework night, I went downstairs to the kitchen. Judith had left a cold meal for me, but I had no appetite and left the food untouched. For ten minutes I sat at the kitchen table, longing to close my eyes and not daring to, in case I gave in to the torpor that was inviting my head toward the hard tabletop.

With five minutes to spare, I opened the kitchen door and slipped into the garden.

No light from the house, no stars. I stumbled in the darkness; soft soil underfoot and the brush of leaves and branches told me when I had veered o(( the path. Out of nowhere a branch scratched my face and I closed my eyes to protect them. Inside my head was a half-painful, half-euphoric vibration. I understood entirely. It was her song. My sister was coming.

I reached the meeting point. The darkness stirred itself. It was him. My hand bumped clumsily against him, then felt itself clasped.

"Are you all right?"

I heard the question, but distantly.

"Do you have a temperature?"

The words were there; it was curious that they had no meaning.

I'd have liked to tell him about the glorious vibrations, to tell him that my sister was coming, that she would be here with me any minute now. I knew it; I knew it from the heat radiating from her mark on my side. But the white sound of her stood between me and my words and made me dumb.

Aurelius let go of my hand to remove a glove, and I felt his palm, strangely cool in the hot night, on my forehead. "You should be in bed," he said.

I pulled at Aurelius's sleeve, a feeble tug, but enough. He followed me through the garden as smoothly as a statue on casters.

I have no memory of Judith's keys in my hand, though I must have taken them. We must have walked through the long corridors to Emme-line's apartment, but that, too, has been wiped from my mind. I do remember the door, but the picture that presents itself to my mind is that it swung open as we reached it, slowly and of its own accord, which I know to be quite impossible. I must have unlocked it, but this piece of reality has been lost and the image of the door opening by itself persists.

My memory of what happened in Emmeline 's quarters that night is fragmented. Whole tracts of time have collapsed in on themselves, while other events seem in my recollection to have happened over and over again in rapid succession. Faces and expressions loom frighteningly large, then Emmeline and Aurelius appear as tiny marionettes a great distance away. As for myself, I was possessed, sleepy, chilled- and distracted during the whole affair by my own overwhelming preoccupation: my sister.

By a process of logic and reason, I have attempted to place into a meaningful sequence images that my mind recorded only incompletely and in random fashion, like events in a dream.

Aurelius and I entered Emmeline's rooms. Our step was soundless on the deep carpet. Through one doorway then another we stepped, until we came to a room with an open door giving onto the garden. Standing in the doorway with her back to us was a white-haired figure. She was humming. La-la-la-la-la. That broken piece of melody, without a beginning, without a resolution, that had haunted me ever since I came to the house. It wormed its way into my head, where it vied with the high-pitched vibration of my sister. At my side Aurelius waited for me to announce us to Emmeline. But I could not speak. The universe was reduced to an unbearable ululation in my head; time stretched into one eternal second; I was struck dumb. I brought my hands to my ears, desperate to ease the cacophony. Seeing my gesture, it was Aurelius who spoke. "Margaret!"

And hearing an unknown voice behind her, Emmeline turns.

Since she was taken by surprise, there is anguish in her green eyes. Her lipless mouth pulls into a distorted O, but the humming does not stop, only veers and lurches into a shrill wail, like a knife in my head.

Aurelius turns in shock from me to Emmeline and is transfixed by the broken face of the woman who is his mother. Like scissors, the sound from her lips slashes the air.

For a time I am both blinded and deafened. When I can see again, Emmeline is crouched on the floor, her keening fallen to a whimper. Aurelius kneels over her. Her hands scrabble at him, and I do not know whether she means to clasp him or to repel him, but he takes her hand in his and holds it.

Hand in hand. Blood with blood.

He is a monolith of sorrow.

Inside my head, still, a torment of bright white sound.

My sister- My sister-

The world retreats and I find myself alone in an agony of noise.

I know what happened next, even if I can't remember it. Aurelius releases Emmeline tenderly onto the floor as he hears steps in the hall. There is an exclamation as Judith realizes she does not have her keys. In the time it takes her to go and find a second set-Maurice's, probably- Aurelius darts toward the door and disappears into the garden. When Judith at last enters the room, she stares at Emmeline on the floor, then, with a cry of alarm, steps in my direction.

But at the time I know none of this. For the light that is my sister embraces me, possesses me, relieves me of consciousness. At last.