Chapter 3
He doesn't acknowledge her.
She screams. She keeps on screaming. Calling to him, whoever he is.
And still, there is no reckoning on his side of things.
It's been a few enough times now, that she has had a glimpse into that man's world. Enough, that she's noticed a change in light, like the change in her currents' warmth, but quicker. Day. Night. An unwelcome reminder. A sting, into her own reality. That there is something missing down there.
She hisses.
He doesn't do anything. He keeps on dying. He doesn't acknowledge her.
That might be the worst.
She has noticed that, really, none of the other men hanging are waking up, just like this one is. She figures that's why he is so intent on keeping calm, on not trashing around, when she sees him take a new breath and hears his heart beat loud. He must be very special indeed, to wake up when the others keep on sleeping.
She can't wait for him to acknowledge her. One way or another.
By the time the man falls from his rope, Quỳnh has come around her own reality enough time to know a few things. First, the cold is not welcoming, wherever they are. Two, the men by his sides have lost limbs and they are still not moving. While that old man keeps on struggling. Just like she is. Three, he still hasn't done anything, to tell her that he knows she sees him.
What if he didn't.
What if he couldn't.
What if she was alone, truly and terrifyingly alone.
She can't make sense of her mind breaking down to show her this, not when she had been so soothingly happy before he came to her like this. It's been so long since she's been away from there, she doesn't believe she could have imagined it all.
Even less an old man like him. It doesn't feel right. If she had to think someone up, it wouldn't be that.
She wonders if she's cursed. Cursed to see people going on about their lives, up in the air, when she is down there.
Quỳnh drowns, lips tight, mind racing against those lights that keep on coming and going in his world, while her own cycles feel so much slower.
- - - -
She doesn't scream now. It's useless, or so it feels.
She sees the man walking, stumbling around what she knows to be trees. She doesn't doubt it. Those huge things, so much bigger than the ones she has somewhere in her mind, almost as dark as some corners of her own reality. Her fingers tingle when she sees them, as if they have touched them before, and want to touch them again.
She sees him falling flat on his front, unmoving for a moment, before he takes a breath like she gulps down water. And he goes back up.
Once, this happens when someone is moving the man around. A thief. The thought, whatever it means, comes through quickly. Quỳnh feels her muscles coiling, ready as if that danger was close to her. She only hits the walls around her.
The thief, trembling, screams as the man snaps awake. It startles Quỳnh to silence, the echoing brittleness of the sound ringing in her mind. It's been a while since she's heard such a harsh sound. Even when the army was walking past the pillory, the sounds had been muffled. Maybe by fear, maybe by awe. But never so loud. Never so strong. Never so right.
Quỳnh notices then how muffled her own world sounds.
The thief is terrified, that she recognizes, and he raises an axe, but the man who is awake again rolls away from the weapon and kicks the thief's legs out from under him, letting him fall stupidly on his side. Her old man doesn't seem to think twice, he jumps on the other one and taking his head in his hand, crashes it down over and over again. His hands are bright red when he stops.
It's been a while since Quỳnh has seen something so sluggishly fascinating, and so soaked up in a color that doesn't exist in her world.
The man breathes harshly and Quỳnh only watches, waiting, to see the other one coming up again. She struggles against her own restraints, wanting to shake that new companion of hers into running away, while he still can. Before the thief comes up again. Maybe he is one of them too.
But the man only breathes, keening between clenched teeth, eyes locked on his fingertips. He is pale, and she feels despair, down her guts, despair that isn't hers. She doesn't understand why the man would be so desperate. She is angered instead. He should run, he should leave, he should ensure his survival. Not just tear up on some lost blood.
She doesn't understand why he does just that, why he doesn't run. Until she realizes that the thief won't come awake again. Oh. No rush then.
The man leaves the body behind, only taking what had been stolen from him first. He stumbles on again, muttering to himself in words that grates Quỳnh's ears. Latin, she thinks. Or something like it.
Quỳnh concludes now, that whatever makes the man wake up when he is down, when he sleeps, when the light goes away from his eyes, might well be the same thing that makes her come back too. The both of them trashing and fighting against something that spits them out and forces them back into their worlds, while it takes the others.
Others who never come back. Is that why she sees him? Because he is like her and she is like him?
So she considers again the man that walks in her mind. She considers him, and his reality, and hers, and what it must mean, if no one else comes back from everything they go through, like the both of them do.
Quỳnh drifts as he walks, wondering if he too, feels the loneliness growing when that knowledge comes kicking in. The despair stays too. She wants to think it's not hers, but she wonders.
She wonders if she should thank him or hate him. Thank him for reminding her of everything that is. When she feels lost wherever she is. Lost and lonely. Or maybe she should hate him. Because before him, ignorant of what was, she had been fulfilled, with only her own reality and nothing bothering her sleep.
For the first time in a long time, she feels something burning deep in her heart. It's not madness. It's more concrete.
Envy, it is.
- - -
The man walks, for times and times. Quỳnh has become accustomed to the flashes of his life. He still doesn't acknowledge her, but at this point, what does it matter. It's strange for her, every new glimpse a revelation. Of a world she used to know, a world she had forgotten almost. There are the muddy roads when she thinks don't walk there, you'll fall, the fire in the dead of the cold, don't do it now, you'll attract animals you idiot, the thirst. The thirst shakes her. That need for water. It disturbs her, because she's so full of the sea around her, so used to it, she doesn't think she could have gone on without it, until the man showed her the world as is. When he feels the thirst, and she wakes, she strangles herself between mouthful of saltiness. There's the lingering need for water and the instinctual fight not to drink any. But she still drowns. She still drowns. And he is still thirsty.
She might start to hate him a bit more because of it.
- - -
At some point, Quỳnh feels how the man's spirit shifts. He becomes swifter, he takes more care walking through the forest, avoiding the roads. Being unnoticed.
He waits, listens as the people speak. She knows he understands whatever they are saying because she can see his frowns and his face shifting at some words. She vaguely gathers a sound here and there, but her mind can't fathom what it relies on, not yet.
He is scared, he is suspicious, but his heart betrays him, Quỳnh can hear it stirring, quickening. It's a familiar feeling, tingling down her limbs and making her dizzy.
She understands, when the man happens upon a remote farm. And he stands there in silence and awe.
Home.
A woman comes out, looking harassed by the hours and ready to snarl at whoever dared to come bother her at this early hour. The snarl turns to a sharp scream. Then silence. Then tears.
It's home.
It's love.
Quỳnh's lips move, a touch she had forgotten sparkling wonder on her lips. A touch that isn't there, a breath that doesn't mingle with hers. A life that doesn't link to hers anymore.
Quỳnh's heart breaks a little bit more.
- - -
Quỳnh forgets herself. It's the matter of a moment, but when she sees the woman, Andromache, her Andromache, standing in the man's home, living, she breathes in. It's sharp, it's quick, it runs down her throat and makes her lungs sting, but she doesn't scream.
For the first time in a long time, she is only silent when she goes. She doesn't need any sounds to be uttered.
She remembers herself.
She remembers this woman.
She remembers a name. One word, her world.
Andromache
And her heart can't take it.
- - - - -
"Who is she?" Quỳnh hears him ask.
There are no replies. It's dark.
- - - -
She's shaking as she comes up again. She's shaking, hands scratching the metal in front of her. She's shaking, because God it was Andromache. Andromache.
Quỳnh distantly feels her memories stirring up, feels her body thrums, the distant and yet never ending presence that had followed her always, a background warmth in her darkest hours. It had a name, and a face again. It was that woman. Her woman. Again.
Andromache.
She doesn't think anymore, there's only one thing her mind is dedicated to: Andromache.
She fights her restraints. She will see Andromache again. She has to. There's no choice.
They have to.
Andromache.
That's all she believes in.
She can't wait to see her again. She screams. Make the sleep comes faster. And the flashes of life quicker.
- - - -
She isn't there.
Andromache.
Quỳnh drinks everything in, eyes wide open around the man's life, the one she has learned answers to Sébastien, but she cannot see Andromache.
The flash isn't as short, it's not as quick. It draws on, slowly. She can't think why, but she doesn't like it.
Sébastien is there, with his wife, even with some kids. He looks grimly happy.
But Quỳnh cannot see Andromache.
Where is Andromache?
The entire day of that man's life, she has glimpses of. More than any other times before. But no Andromache.
Where is she?
Quỳnh screams.
(She wants to think it's her, that make Sébastien startle in his own world.)