*Some readers may find the content of this chapter unsettling.
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Isa hovered on the threshold of the darkened laundry room. Her skin prickled, and her tongue clung paper-dry to the roof of her mouth. Something moved. Her fingers trembled, and she had to keep herself from slamming the door shut. She reached in and flicked on the light.
The rough, straw-coloured rope that dangled from the heavy pipes over the clothes dryer looked as though it had been cut. It swung loosely in the draft she'd created by opening the door, the knot at the end of the rope describing tiny, tightening circles in the air. Isa approached it in a daze, and reached up to touch it, to pull on it gently. She'd tied it tight - her fingertips carried the memory of the knot. Her foot had knocked into something on the floor when she'd stepped forward, and it rolled - an empty pill bottle. She remembered the way that the cap had resisted her shaking hands, and that she'd had to press down on the lid as she'd turned it.
She remembered it all, suddenly. It came back in pictures.
Open your eyes, Isadora.
Her bare feet on the carpet of the hallway, inching soundlessly onward, as Peyman Hall slept around her. The rope she'd lifted from the boat house, and hidden in her backpack all day long. How she'd struggled to knot it properly. The prescription she'd filled at the village pharmacy the week before, clasped in one sweat-sodden hand. How she'd closeted herself in the bathroom and swallowed the whole bottle, pill by pill, just in case she lost her nerve. Insurance.
And yet.
And yet as she stood there and surveyed what she knew was the scene of her own death, there was also one thing she struggled to remember. Try as she might, she found she couldn't recall what she'd been thinking in those last awful moments - the horrifying physical facts, yes, the sensations, in minute detail. But what had she been thinking? She could recall no sadness, anger, bitterness. She couldn't remember feeling any emotion at all, not even resignation - only blank space, an absence. It was as though someone had reached in and wiped away those thoughts, or pulled a curtain over them.
Surprisingly, she felt no grief, only utter bewilderment. What could have possessed her to end it all, and so suddenly? It made no sense. It was as though she could remember someone else having done it, while she, puppet-like, had only watched from a corner. Distantly, as she played that final moment over, she recalled a clatter as she'd stepped off the dryer. She'd had something... something in her hand, and it had fallen - something besides the pill bottle. She dropped to her knees and scanned the floor. After a moment, she reached under the dryer and drew out her chickadee pin from the dark dustiness beneath. Her other hand travelled to her pocket, almost absently. Hadn't she had this only a moment before?
Did you really do this, Isadora?
She'd never been a cheerful person - she didn't have Cass's happy-go-lucky spirit, or Daphne's unyielding passion for life and art, but surely there could have been no reason for this. Such a final act. Why?
Her heart beat faster in her chest. She couldn't have. She was here, wasn't she? Drawing breath, pulse racing? If she'd died there in the laundry room, where was her body? How could she still be walking around? Why couldn't she remember the reason she'd done it?
But hers were the hands that had tied that rope. She remembered the chilly steel of the dryer under her bare feet, and how the cobwebs on the pipes had looked from up close. The rope had disturbed some of them when she'd secured it around the pipe, and they had drifted in the air, untethered, barely there. She reached up and gently drew her fingers down her throat, recalling the scratch of the rope. It had happened.
And she was... utterly mystified as to why.
She turned and looked back down the hall, unsure of what her next move could be. An incredulous, astonished laugh bubbled up from her chest. What in God's name was she supposed to do now? What --
A crash and a thump sounded overhead, and the lights in the hallway flickered, and then went out . The laugh died in her throat. Something was walking overhead, dragging itself across the floor upstairs. The step was uneven and heavy. And she knew.
She moved. In an instant, she was back down the hall, and bolting out of Peyman - the glass pane in the door cracked as she pushed it outwards, and the door fell off its hinges. The swing set was on the ground, half collapsed, as though overturned by some invisible giant. Her feet thumped against the grass as she stumbled forward, but her course was true: she felt oddly weightless, as though she might suddenly take flight and soar overhead.
When it came, she didn't flinch at the howl of demented, anguished rage that rang out behind her -- feral, tortured, agonized. She wasn't running from it, but towards something else, something she couldn't put a name to.
A feeling. A sureness. A certainty that grew as she moved closer.
The grass under her feet became gravel as she sprinted down the hill, the failing light drawing in around her. The sun was setting, and the last of its glow permeated the grey autumn evening clouds and fell in shafts over the water here and there. It was beautiful, if she could have stopped to notice. The scream sounded again, closer this time. Stagger was behind her, and he was gaining on her.
The longest dock came into view as she rounded the boat house. Tristan was standing on the edge of it, his back to her. He stared out at the bay, and didn't turn as she approached, though the boards of the dock trembled and rolled beneath her feet. It was only when she drew level with him that he met her eyes. He spoke not a word, but merely nodded, and reached for her hand. They jumped together. Stagger's incensed scream echoed out over the water, so close she felt his rancid breath on the back of her neck.
The fall through the air was effortless and somehow wonderful - a bird falling from a branch, wings outstretched. The water was delicious, and far warmer than she'd imagined - as opposed to consuming her, it embraced her like an old friend, welcoming her in and surging around her, almost playful. Tristan swam by her side, his thin arms sluicing forward in the water with the strength and confidence of a much older person. It had been so long since she'd swum that she had been sure she'd forgotten how, but no one had explained this to her body; she surged forward, heedless of the tangled weeds and depths beneath her steadily kicking feet.
Once they were several meters away from the dock, Isa chanced a look back - there'd been no splash behind them. Stagger was poised on the edge of the dock, slashing at the air and bellowing his defeat. Blood ran down the face and arms where he clutched at himself - matted hair and filthy, scratched-up skin.
And at last, she saw him true.
He wasn't a he: her eyes had told her a lie. The creature's eyes were red and small and dull, but the face was plainly female, if lacking in any feminine beauty at all. The arms and legs were long and spindly and the face was gaunt, consumed by shadow. It -- She -- was ugly, a creature worthy of nothing but pity and rejection. There were gashes down the arms, and the creature was stooped as though bearing up under an invisible weight, but Isa knew her immediately: She'd been fighting her blind her entire life - an enemy with whom Isa had shared a bed, a body, and a name. She had been cut loose, now. The creature paced frantically at the end of the dock, unable or unwilling to jump into the water, screaming and raging and weeping, indecisive, unmasked, inconsolable. And she would remain there, filled to bursting with an anguish that could never be comforted, for she had both won and lost. She had ended her torment, and yet also ensured that it would never end. Her wails faded away as they swam further out, and then ceased. Isa didn't look back again. Instead she and Tristan swam still deeper out into the bay, side by side.
There was a splash close by, and then an impossible sound. Isa felt her heart lift, and then she began to weep for joy, a difficult thing to manage while performing the breaststroke. Through the mists that hovered over the water, a small, dark form emerged in front of them, paddling furiously and clearly having had a head start: Midas circled around them and swam behind, a rear guard. Tristan's shout of welcome and exhilaration rang out over the bay, and together the three swam on, tireless and now invincible.
As they swam, they gradually drew nearer to each other, until eventually they again became one, pressing on for that furthest shore. Across the bay and just out of sight, a young man with broad shoulders waited, his eyes on the horizon.