VACANCY & ARIEL

The things she had forgotten, a different sky, different tastes, different musics, and the things she could not forget, surviving in her as instinct and dream…I wanted to watch her change, to guide that change, to walk with her in the West Virginia woods and give her the knowledge by which she could overcome her innate fears. I wanted to illuminate the past, demonstrate that its hold on us was breakable, and then we might be able to live. But I didn’t believe we could escape our natures or our fate. She had to go her own path and I had to return to mine. Having seen her again, I thought now I could relinquish her and abandon the world to the Siskins and the Rahuls. I’d find another country in which to forget her…or perhaps that would require another universe.

I waved at the rim of the hollow, telling her with that sign and a harsh shout to go. Reluctantly, she walked away, and then she ran, her supple stride carrying her a hundred feet toward the sky in no more time than it would have taken me to turn and go back inside the bunker. Halfway up the slope, she stopped. She was scarcely more than a shadow at that distance, but I felt her eyes on me. She cried out, “Isha!” in a voice both pleading and demanding. The connection between us was palpable, a tension stretched to the breaking point—intimations of emotion seemed to course along it. She stood awhile longer, then turned and sprinted for the rim. The connection was broken, shocking my heart. After the briefest of hesitations, abandoning all my resolve, compelled by things I knew and things I could never know, I followed.