Living in Threes (29 page)

I couldn’t even sing on key. But I could whisper the words in Mom’s ear while the music mix shifted over to Anonymous 4. It all fit as if it was meant to: the voices, the words, the worlds and times all wound together—so far apart and yet so close.

Eight thousand years. Three lives, one soul. And all the lives and souls that we belonged to, or that belonged to us.

“
In every world I am with you
,” I whispered while Meritre sang inside me and those four beautiful, almost supernatural voices echoed her in the still, dim room. On the other side of time I felt Meru, just being there, being part of us, and the starwing adding its weird sweet harmony.

“The cat slipping soft and supple through the door,
two friends meeting by the river,
sunrise and moonset and the paths of stars in the water—
in all of those, I am with you. I speak to you.

“I am the world and the world is in me.
All that I am, I am for you.
We are one, we who love.
There is no death; there is no ending.
We are one.
We are all one, we who were, who are,
who live in eternity.”

I felt her go. Maybe my voice helped her, or showed her the way. Maybe she could hear that other voice, the one that was me, too, thousands of years ago, but still alive, still present, still here; and the voice that hadn’t been born yet, that wouldn’t be born for thousands of years.

One thing I know. She knew I was there. It could have been death making the signals misfire and the muscles twitch, but I felt her fingers tighten on mine.

They held for a handful of heartbeats. Then she was gone.

Chapter 27

I’ve read the books. I know what I’m supposed to feel. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. See? I’ve got it memorized.

The bargaining part? If magic was real, that would work.

If magic was real, miracles would be, too. Mom would still be here.

Meanwhile, I settled right in the middle of anger, curled up and let it keep me warm. It was cold out there in the dark, no matter how many people came with cards and casseroles and bouquets of flowers.

They had tears. I couldn’t find any. Dad and Aunt Jessie took care of things. Kelly took care of me, which I should probably have resented a lot, but I had too much else to be mad at.

That was a long night. People kept trying to make me go home, but I wouldn’t. When morning came, the man from the mortuary came, too, to take Mom away.

Meritre’s princess was still marinating in, basically, baking soda. Meru’s mom was a vial of DNA and a bubble of ashes that they’d finally decided to scatter from a starship. My mom fit in the middle. DNA, no. Ashes, in a couple of days, yes.

That horrified Meritre so much she almost pulled out of the Triple. “You
burn
them? How can you do that? You’ve robbed them of eternity!”

“We’ve learned that it’s not the body that lasts,” Meru said. “It’s the energy, the self—the thing you ancients call the soul. Look at us. Aren’t we proof of it?”

Meritre didn’t want to see that. It shook her whole world in ways we far-future selves couldn’t really understand. Egypt is all about the mummies, if you ask most people in my time, and the mummies are about keeping every person’s body whole so all her souls can last forever.

Everything else Meritre had seen about us was either so strange it didn’t make enough sense to be a problem, or enough like things she knew that she had no trouble relating to it. This was right on the edge of unthinkable.

It distracted me, which wasn’t an awful thing. The time I spent trying to figure out how to make Meritre feel better was time I wasn’t facing the huge gaping hole in my life.

Mom used to be in that hole. Now she wasn’t. The last place I wanted to go after the hospice was home to a house that was full of her things, her smell, her memories—but not her.

I could have made Dad or Aunt Jessie or Cat take me to a hotel. But I didn’t. If Meritre could face a world that burned its dearest dead, I could face the house I’d lived in with Mom since I was five years old.

It wasn’t home. Home had Mom in it. Sitting in the living room with the TV on but the sound off, gritting my teeth while friends and neighbors trooped through, I knew I could leave. Chicago, Massachusetts, Egypt—it didn’t matter. This wasn’t my house any more.

Nobody expected me to make much sense, and that was good, because I didn’t have any to make.

Rick and Cat showed up in there somewhere—I think there was lunch on the table, or maybe it was supposed to be early dinner—and I was glad to see them, honestly. Rick brought a stack of movies for me to watch when I was up to it, and Kristen came loaded down with pizza, with Devon Mackey looming behind her.

Even in the state I was in, I could be impressed. For Kristen, three weeks was serious monogamy.

I wasn’t much use to any of them. Tomorrow I’d be glad to watch movies or play online games or go riding with Cat and Kristen and a bunch of the barn kids. Today I’d slipped outside of time.

Even with Meritre gone off to deal with the shock to her system, I could open my eyes and see that fierce blue Egyptian sky. Or I’d look around and see stars, and hear the ocean crashing at the foot of Meru’s favorite rock.

If it had been night, I’d have gone out on turtle watch. It was still hours until the sun went down. People kept coming and being sympathetic and bringing food. Food and funerals: that’s been going on since long before Meritre, and from what I gathered from Meru, it was still happening thousands of years in the future.

Finally, when the sun had started to get low, the stream of people dried up. The usuals had families, dates, jobs to get to—all the things real people did when they had real lives.

Cat hung around the longest. “You sure you’re okay?” she asked. “You don’t need me to stay?”

“You’ll be late for your shift,” I said. “I’ll be all right. I’ll call you if I’m not.”

“Promise?”

“Promise,” I said.

“You better,” she said. We aren’t touchy types, but she hugged me, and held me for a long time, till I could hardly breathe. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to stay where I was, forever and ever.

Finally she let me go. It was cold in the six inches between us, and lonely. “Tomorrow. We’ll go for a ride in the orange grove.”

“I’d like that,” I said.

After that it was just us—and then it wasn’t even that many. Dad and Aunt Jessie took off to do something at the mortuary—sign papers, pick out a casket, I wasn’t paying attention. I could have gone with them, but I’d used up all my grit.

What I needed wasn’t here. Kelly saw it, because she asked me, “What do you want to do? Can I help?”

I started to say no and hole up in my room, but I really needed to do this. If she was willing, why not? “I need to see Bonnie,” I said. “My horse. Will you take me to the barn?”

I waited for her to say I should get some sleep instead, or point out that she was totally exhausted herself, but she didn’t even blink. “Of course,” she said. “Just tell me where to go.”

I guess it’s true about doctors working three days straight and still being able to function. Kelly grabbed the keys to the rental car—not Mom’s car, which sat in the garage; Dad and Aunt Jessie hadn’t taken it, either, and I was glad. I wasn’t ready to see anybody else behind that wheel. Or worse, to be the driver with the learner’s permit, and have someone else in the passenger seat.

It was a quiet ride. Kelly followed my directions, but aside from “Turn left” and “Go on a bit up there,” neither one of us felt like making conversation.

The sun was almost down by the time we got to Mangrove Farm. A few people were around, mostly boarders who had day jobs and came to ride at night under the arena lights. It was a different world than the one I was usually in. I was a morning kid. These were the evening riders.

That was good. If they didn’t know me, they couldn’t crowd around and be all sympathetic. Barb wasn’t in sight, and that was good, too. I just wanted Bonnie.

I pointed Kelly to the lounge with the air conditioning and the vending machines. By the time she opened the door, I was halfway past the barn to Bonnie’s pasture.

Usually when I went on vacation, Bonnie wouldn’t speak to me when I came back. I’d get a prime view of her backside, and that’s the best I’d get for three days.

This time I saw her backside, all right, but that’s because she was nose down in her evening hay. When I rattled the chain on the gate, her head popped up and she did the neatest pirouette you’ll ever see, and cantered over to me.

I don’t cry for humans. I cry for things that are so beautiful I just can’t stand it, like Bonnie in front of me, all crusty from rolling in the sand, with a mouthful of half-chewed hay and eyes that knew everything I’d ever thought or felt or been.

Impatient Bonnie, who always has to be moving and thinking and doing, stood for a long time while I cried into her mane. Her warm animal smell filled my nose.

The other two inside touched her through me with a kind of wonder. Meritre had never seen or heard of a horse. For Meru it was a creature she’d seen on the web, that still existed outside of Earth, but the real thing was more than she could have imagined. For her, Bonnie was as wonderful as the starwing.

She really was. I hugged her firm silky neck and scritched her favorite spots, all around the withers and down the front of her shoulders. She hugged me back, pressing me to her chest for a minute before she let go.

While I was with her, finally I was home. I could feel Mom around us, because Mom loved her so much, and that was Mom’s baby in her, growing slowly the way horse babies do.

If I went to Chicago, what would happen to Bonnie? Where would she go? Would I ever see her again?

I couldn’t be thinking these things tonight. But I had to. I had to think of so much, and I had to do it soon. It wouldn’t go away.

Bonnie shook her head and blew, stamping at the flies. I raised my head from her mane and blinked. It was getting dark.

I couldn’t believe I’d been out there that long. The sun was down and the moon was coming up.

It was doing the same thing over Meritre’s stone and mud-brick city and Meru’s cold ocean. Meritre had the cat in her lap. Meru was wrapped in the starwing. We were all together, remembering our dead.

It wasn’t a sad feeling. That was kind of weird, but kind of comforting. Bonnie was there for all of us, big and white and calm.

There was hope inside her. I moved down the length of her and rested my head on her big white butt. My hand rested where the baby must be.

It was ’way too little to feel yet, but it was alive and moving around in there. Mom had a magazine that showed what it looked like, from someone who ran a camera into a mare’s uterus. It looked like a horse, with legs and ears and eyes and everything, even this tiny. And it galloped—up and down in its own private ocean.

I swear I could see it. Meru could, too, on her web, and Meritre because we could. That was life, as alive as it could possibly be.

Death never wins. It knocks you flat and finishes you off, but you wake up again. You come back.