The Woman Who Searches, Part 2

It seems a lifetime before I hear the door open down below.  I tense, but force myself to wait, motionless.  The footsteps that climb the stairs sound like two human feet, no cane tap tapping, and I’m relieved.  But not completely.  I still don’t know what it is that lives here.

When it emerges over the top step I see that it is a person, but male or female or old or young, it’s hard to tell.  It has wild, long, dirty hair full of sticks and leaves and a face smeared with mud.  The clothes are loose and raggedy, and I see long legs and arms extending far past the grimy tatters.

I decide that it may be a young woman, because the face is free of beard or mustache, and I don’t think this wild creature would go to the trouble of shaving.  The figure is far too tall to be a young boy.  Just as I am thinking this, I realize that she is staring at me, her eyes wide and bright icy blue.

“Heh-hello,” I say, her gaze pinning me down, motionless.  “My name is Verenez Auriel.  Do you live here?  What is your name?”

She doesn’t answer, just stares at me like she’ll kill me if I make any sudden moves.  It makes me swallow.  She doesn’t look afraid, or as if she might run, though she obviously mistrusts me.  I’m in her home and she doesn’t like it.  Her stare is threatening, harsh.

“I don’t mean you any harm.  I’m . . . searching . . . for answers . . . to a mystery.  I was told I’d find the answer here.  Perhaps we can talk?”

Still nothing.  I’ve been careful to stay still, so she hasn’t moved either, and she makes no reply.  Her eyes are bright and intelligent, but it makes me wonder —

“Can you speak?”

That does it.

“I can speak.”  Her voice is husky.  Female, though, I’m sure I’ve guessed right.  Her glare takes on an insulted look.

“Oh.  Good.  I’m sorry.”

She is proud, for all her wildness and poverty.  She is so very tall, and stands like a queen, head tilted in the air.  I gaze up at her, standing there, looking as if she might kill me for being in her home and asking her stupid questions.  The sight of her does something to me, it makes me feel dizzy all of a sudden.  My mind scrabbles to understand.  It’s like I’m missing something important, something that is just out of my reach, if I can just —

“My name is Ilina,” she says, relenting a little.  “What is your mystery?”

Ilina.  That name means something.  It hits me.

“The murdered child.  That was the name the old woman called her.  I don’t understand.  You are Ilina?”

She nodded.

“Then you’re not dead.  Not murdered.  You’ve been living here all these years.”

She nodded again.

“But why?”  I move forward a little, forgetting to be cautious.  “Do you know who you are?  That your mother has thought you dead all these years?”

“How is my mother?” Ilina asks, but her look and tone are uncaring, as if she has no feeling for the memory of the old woman.

“Dead,” I say.  Her gaze is unwavering.  “She died in her sleep just a few days ago.”

“And what is it to you?” she asks.  “Who are you that you should come searching for me?”

“I . . . I am the woman who searches.”  It is all I can think of to say, at first.  Then, “It is what I do.  I have come here searching for a queen, and your mother gave me shelter at her inn, in exchange for a promise.  The promise that I would find this tower and the answers to what happened to her child.”

It is now I began to wonder.

I remember my purpose, my reason for being here, the one I have put aside to look for the tower.  The purpose I have laid aside for the promise.

I begin to wonder if they are one in the same.

“Your task is a lie,” says Ilina.  “My mother has been dead far longer than you think.”

“She lived,” I insist.  “I saw her, sitting in her chair, and spoke with her.  Then in the morning, she was dead in her chair, and the old man—”

I stop.  Her eyes have clouded with fear.

“What of the old man?” I ask.

“He is no man,” she tells me.  “But a thing made like a man.  There are more of them than us.”

I shiver.  Her words seem to fill my whole being with the cold and the mist that lays over all of Persh.  And still, I don’t understand.

The child playing the piano and the man walking toward me at the lighthouse had the same dull, flat black eyes of the unliving.  But the old woman and man at the inn, I am sure they lived and breathed same as me.

And now she takes pity on me, and says, “My grandmother still lives.  Old and confused she must be.  Many years ago my mother was murdered, and I was stolen away.  We bore the same name, my mother and grandmother and I, all of us Ilina.”

“Who did all this?” I ask.  “Who killed your mother and stole you?  And how is it you live alone here, wild and free, but you haven’t returned home?”

“You call this free?” she asks, with a laugh.  “I cannot go far from this tower, I must always be able to run back to it, if he finds me.”

I don’t need to ask who she is talking about.

“What will happen?  What does he want?”

“Death,” she says.  “My death.  It is all he knows.  Those who made him, and told him to kill, are long dead.  I know, I killed them.”

I believe her.

“But he knows nothing of that,” she goes on.  “Nothing of duty or reward.  It is in his head that he must kill me, and he will go on forever waiting for his chance.”

“The man I saw at the inn, he isn’t the same as this one, is he?  Though they look alike?”

Her cold exterior breaks for a moment, and she seems sad and lonely as she looks to the floor.  “They can be made to look like anyone.  He was made to look like my grandfather, so that we would trust him.  Back then we did not know of these things, or we would have been wary.”

She offers no more, and I do not ask.

Instead I wonder, “Can’t you find a way to . . . to kill it?  Break it?”

She lifts her gaze from the floor.  “I only know how to run from him.”

It seems wrong, to me.  It seems wrong to hide in a bare old tower and only venture so far as your feet can carry you back. It’s no way for anyone to live, especially not one so fierce and proud as Ilina of Persh.

I am convinced now, even if only because my hard journey has driven me insane, that I have found her.  She cries out to me, a Queen of Airidan to a Daughter of Auriel, from behind the dirt and the desperation.  She is fast, and strong, and her solitary life has not killed her spirit.  Someone wanted her dead, once, and now all that is left of them is a dumb machine that does not know when it has already lost.

If only I can get her to believe this.

She fears it, like a child fears the shadows of the night.  Perhaps if I show her a way, she can rise above this fear.

“Ilina,” I say, and reach out to her slowly.  I’m ready to flinch back if she looks threatened, or about to strike.  But she doesn’t make any move.  “You realize you cannot live here forever.  Not like this.  Do you want to remain always in a cage?”

She lifts her shoulders in a brief shrug.  “There’s nothing but death beyond.”

“You have only one guard.  Break free of your fear, and even that is no obstacle.”

She looks at me with disdain, and it is a cold slap in face of my hope and excitement.  “You speak as if the thing is nothing more than what it appears, a gimpy old man,” she says.  “I can run very fast, yes, but he can run just as fast.  I am strong, but he is stronger.  He never tires, never hungers, never doubts.  I cannot kill him with my hands, or sticks or stones, and what more have I?”

“Then you run, you run till—”

She laughs, drowning me out.  “Where is there to run?”

I am silenced.  I know what she means, I’ve seen the emptiness of Persh.  And there is no place more empty than the leagues of countryside surrounding this tower.  There are old buildings, deserted towns, and empty wilderness in all of Persh.  But the closer you come to the sea, the more wilderness there is to find and less of even the remnants of civilization.

I want to ask her what happened to Persh, what became of this place, but I don’t know if she is old enough to remember a time unlike this.  Especially if she has lived this desperate lonely life since she was a child like the doll her grandmother keeps.  Kept, I remind myself.  The dead keep nothing.

While I have been thinking to myself, Ilina has sat down on her bed.  She doesn’t look at me, but into a mirror, so I can still see her face.  She is looking at herself, and I wonder what she sees.

“Perhaps you could leave Persh,” I offer.  “There is nothing for you here, now that the last of your family is dead.  I could take you to a better place.”

She speaks to her reflection.  “He would follow me out of Persh.  Even if I could find the end of it before he catches me, the thing knows nothing of borders.  I am his prey wherever I go.”

She breaks gaze with herself and looks up at me.  “Besides, you could never keep up.”

“There are places we can go where he can’t follow,” I tell her, refusing to be beaten.  I will not be drawn down into hopelessness.  I have been searching for twenty years.  I do not give up.

She doesn’t believe me.  She thinks I am a crazy lady who has wandered the wild for too long.

“There are Gates to other worlds,” I insist.  “Gates that only a few can open.  No mockery of a man could open these Gates.  I can take you through them.  I could take you to my home, which is so unlike Persh you would barely remember this place even exists.  It’s bright and warm and there are many people — real people — who would welcome you.”

“Why should they welcome me?”  Her eyes return to her disheveled image in the mirror.

“Because I’ve been searching for you.  We have been searching for you for many years.  My people would make you their queen.”

She is silent.  I know that somewhere behind the stoic look she gives me, she likes this idea.  She questions it — surely it seems too good to be true.  But what has she to lose?

“All you need to do is face the one thing you fear,” I say.  “Leave this tower, brave the thing that wants you dead, and abandon Persh for Airidan.  I will help you.  You only need to take the first step.”

“Why should I trust you?  A woman who comes out of nowhere, filled with promises of a life too good to be true?  What proof do you have to offer me that you are not here simply to lure me to my death?”

There is challenge in her eyes, but I am too far past caring to be cowed.  “You told me that you killed all who wanted you dead.  Your only enemy is an unthinking machine that cannot learn to realize when its task is irrelevant.  Where then, would I acquire a desire to kill you?”

She looks down.  “Maybe you are a fool, then.  A fool who dreams of impossible things and a place that does not exist.”

“Perhaps.  But I am not a fool who awaits death in a tower, wasting my life with a sorry existence more pitiable than death.”

Her eyes flash — my insult has landed well.  Before she can saying anything I turn from her, and begin to walk down the spiral staircase.

“I will wait for you by the door.”

Truth be told, I’m a little afraid of what I’m asking.  I don’t know where there is a Gateway, we’d have to search one out, and it’s hard to do that while running for your life.  Especially if your enemy has no need of rest.

I wonder where the old man has gone, why he doesn’t stand by the tower door at all hours.  I think perhaps he means to lure Ilina out by giving her a chance, that would be clever.  Only he has never caught her yet . . . .

I think about how she has described this inhuman foe.  How could we defeat him, if he is too strong and fast and indestructible to face with only our bare hands?  And she’s right, she doesn’t have anything else.  I don’t have anything else.

I can see how she would give up hope.

I don’t know how much time passes before I hear her feet on the steps.  It’s hard to tell time in a place like this.  It’s felt like hours, it could have been mere minutes.  But I hear her come and I know, I just know, that she has decided to be brave.

We leave the tower together.

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