Echo North(77)

Light explodes behind my eyes and pain bursts inside of me. I fracture into a thousand different pieces, spin out and out and out, beyond sight and sound and breath. But not beyond feeling. Not beyond pain. Somewhere I think I’m screaming.

An image unfolds in the nothingness around me: a woman lying in bed in a square room, a fire burning on a hearth, two men standing over her. One is my father, much younger than I’ve ever seen him. He’s tall and thin; there is no silver in his beard. He’s crying.

The woman in the bed isn’t moving. There’s a baby cradled in her dead arms, a baby with blue eyes and dark hair and smooth, perfect skin.

The other man eases the baby from the woman and hands her—hands me—to my father. “I shall call you Echo,” he whispers, “because you have the echo of your mother’s strong heart. No one can ever take that from you.”

The image melts away like honey in hot tea and another uncurls to take its place: A dark-haired girl playing in a fort built of books in her father’s shop, laughing as a pile of them collapses on top of her. A dark-haired boy pulls her free and spins her in a circle before setting her firmly on her feet again. “Best put them back before Papa gets here!”

The girl and boy scramble to collect the books, slotting them expertly onto the shelves as though they’ve done this many times before.

Confusion swells hot and sharp inside of me. This girl is me, but not me. I remember this, and yet I can’t. Because this me is nine years old, and the skin on her face is as smooth and clear as the day she was born.

Impossible.

The strange, cruel not-memory fades into another: the me-who-can’t-be-me is several years older, sharing lunch with a crowd of children at school. She’s laughing and happy. She has friends. No one is throwing stones at her. No one is cursing her as the spawn of the Devil or crossing themselves.

I’m breaking. This can’t be. And yet some part of me remembers it—the taste of the sunlight on my skin, the easy friendship of a girl called Sara, the sense of belonging strong enough to banish a lifetime of loneliness.

I don’t understand. Make it stop! I try to scream, but I’m caught fast in the sticky unwinding of my life as it should have been—as it could have been.

I watch as the other me grows up. She still laughs with Rodya and holds Papa dear, but her world is larger than the bookshop. She visits the city with her friend Sara. She goes to a dance in the village. She blushes as boys ask her to dance. She wiles away hours practicing the piano, pouring her soul into Czjaka and Behrend. She dreams of studying music at the university, of filling all the world with song.

My father introduces other-me to Donia, who doesn’t seem to disapprove of my existence any less for the absence of the scars. Her hatred oozes from her like muck from a bog. My father shows me the cottage in the woods. We work on it together, fix it up just as I remember, only the carpet in front of the fire is blue—wasn’t it red?

I watch as my father marries Donia in the new chapel, as Rodya gives me the compass-watch for my birthday. I fall asleep with it pressed up against my chest, the steady ticking following me into my dreams like it had never been broken.

Debt finds us in this version of my life just as it did in the other: Donia demanding more than we could afford, my father obliging her because he is capable of greater kindness and sacrifice than she could ever comprehend. He leaves for the city to sell his rare books and maps.

He’s missing for half a year.

I watch the other me find him in the snowy wood, hear the wolf asking her to stay with him. No, not asking. Demanding. Or he’d kill her father and her brother. He’d kill her, too. I can taste other-me’s fear, hot and sharp and filled with despair. But she agrees to the wolf’s terms, to save her family.

I watch as the other me goes with the wolf to the house. She swears not to light the lamp, and spends the whole first night awake, staring into the darkness, afraid to shut her eyes lest the wolf devour her in her sleep.

The strange half-memories fly thicker now: beautiful-me grows to trust the wolf, even admire him. She explores the book-mirrors and falls in love with Hal. Mokosh convinces her to light the lamp, and Hal is taken by the Wolf Queen’s soldiers.

Shame courses through me as I watch myself kneel in the snow, vowing to save Hal and undo my mistake.

My long journey passes in a blink. I meet Ivan and Isidor. I travel the northern wilds and discover Ivan is the North Wind. I climb the mountain to the Wolf Queen’s court and invoke the old magic to try and save Hal.

I hold on to him as he writhes and twists beneath me. I am stubborn and proud. I am fiercely certain there is nothing the Wolf Queen can do or say to shake me from my purpose.

But I am wrong.

He lied to you.

He never loved you.

He never wanted you.

He was just trying to save his own worthless skin.

He never wanted you.

He never wanted you.

Heartbreak and betrayal twist across beautiful-me’s face. Despair weighs in her eyes. She is broken.

She lets go of Hal.

NO! I want to scream.

But it’s too late.

The Wolf Queen laughs and drags Hal away from the other me. Bonds of silver close around my wrists.

“Do not let her take you, too,” says Hal, staring into the other-me’s face, “Please. Please, Echo. I can’t lose you. Not like this.”