Glimmering

He stepped to the railing and leaned out. A film of ice covered the rail; as he stood there he could feel it melting beneath his fingertips, giving forth a damp green smell. There was a strange emerald clarity to the air, a brilliance that he thought must be caused by ice crystals, or reflected light, one of those atmospheric things he had never understood. He looked up into the sky, the coiling clouds and haze of smoke above the Hudson. He felt no fear; only a sort of exhausted peace. A sense that he stood upon a battlefield, but at least he was still standing.

“Happy New Year!”

From the riverbank far below a voice echoed. There was a rapid burst of fireworks or gunfire, cheers and what sounded like a trombone blatting.

Jack yawned, rubbed his eyes, and indulged in the absurd wish for more champagne, recalling Larry Muso in his arms.

I should have kissed him, he thought. He remembered Larry’s words—Go back to your house—wait for me there, Jack, I’ll meet you as soon as I can—and Leonard’s—You’ll see me again, we’ll see everybody again, real soon.

He couldn’t remember the last time Leonard had said anything remotely comforting.

He stretched, wincing. His arms hurt, and his wrist, and his chest. His mouth and throat ached from where he’d inhaled burning fumes. He wondered if, by chance, Emma did have anything in that black bag for him. He scarcely felt strong enough to walk back to his bed. He looked out for one last time into the night.

Beneath him the estate’s overgrown lawns sloped into stands of sumac and alder, the ruins of all the other houses that had once stood guard upon the Hudson. Light shone through the tangle of trees and broken buildings—firelight, the flicker of a few moving headlights, myriad bonfires and a confetti of red and green marking the rowdy flotilla massed upon the river. The fires along the upper span of the George Washington Bridge still burned. Its struts glowed dull gold and citron yellow, and cast a spangled reflection in the black water below.

It’s beautiful, Jack thought. It’s really beautiful.

He lifted his head. For some reason—the cold; excessive moisture in the air; maybe just his blurred vision—the glimmering suddenly seemed less pronounced. He frowned, then sucked his breath in.

For one moment—so quick he was not even certain if it was real, or if it was another remnant of the fusarium stirring in his sight—for one moment, something seemed to move in the vault above him. A profound darkness that might have been a cloud, or wings, or a mile-long pennon; the silent flank of a dirigible passing at an unimaginable distance through the heavens or the shadow of something else, spirochete swimming across his eye’s inner orb, the silhouette of a face he loved. Something moved, a vast cyclonic eye that turned slowly in the blazing heavens, as though the sky was ready to burst at last.

But even farther overhead something else glimmered, faint as Jack’s breath in the chill morning air, faint as a heartbeat, faint as dawn.

“I see it!” he cried aloud. “I can see it, it’s there, it’s really there—”

And in that instant, the rush of wind and revelry dying into the sound of the sea and the wails of the infants downstairs: in that instant Jack smiled; and thought he saw the stars.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elizabeth Hand is the author of Æstival Tide, Winterlong, Waking the Moon, Illyria, Generation Loss, and others. She lives in Lincolnville, Maine.

NOVELS BY ELIZABETH HAND

Available Dark

Radiant Days

Errantry: Strange Stories

Generation Loss

Illyria

Saffron & Brimstone

Mortal Love

Bibliomancy

Black Light

Last Summer at Mars Hill

Waking the Moon

Icarus Descending

Æstival Tide

Winterlong