Chapter 5: Ice
She waited for over a week, and when Jason finally did respond, it was in person. There was something different about him, though… his eyes. They’re copper, like Skye’s when I first met her. The person who I knew has turned into a stranger.
“Come on, there’s something I want to show you,” Jason said.
She climbed into the seat next to him. There were none of the practical joke battle-scars on the hull, and none of the laughing and joking that she could remember in flights at his side. They were silent. The children had grown up.
“Will we ever be Princess Katie and Prince Jason of Avalon again?” Katie finally said.
Jason didn’t answer.
Good one, Katie. He doesn’t know you’ve forgiven him for Skye, even.
They finally landed. Not on a space station, but on a planet—only this one was not like Skye’s. Everything was dark, and the cliffs and rocks seemed to take on shapes of their own. Far from being frightened, though, Katie’s imagination was stirred.
“You see that one over there?”
Katie thought he was going to make some kind of dark, brooding comment.
“It looks kind of like your dad’s face when he sat on that whoopee cushion with Miss Felicity across the table.”
He had delivered this with an entirely straight face, and Katie burst into hysterical laughter. Jason did not join her, though, and she suddenly searched his eyes. The same metallic copper. What happened to him? He’s scarred even worse than I am.
“Look at the stars,” Jason said.
They were hard to see in the middle of all of the darkness, but Katie could make out a few.
“Sometimes I would watch the stars, and pretend that I was part of something much greater. Someone told me that once. That there are always stars to light the way, no matter how dark the road.”
Katie felt a stirring of that same deep joy that she used to feel talking nature-philosophy with Skye. All three of them shared a fondness for poetic language. Katie stopped again when she made out Jason’s eyes once more. Still copper. He’s not trying not to let it sink in, he just can’t. “Jason, what happened wasn’t your fault. I’m sorry for ignoring you. I was ignoring everyone.”
“I know.”
Copper. Where are you, my friend?
“Something else I want to show you.”
Jason silently led Katie through the rocks. The place wasn’t completely dead after all; the rocks opened after a few minutes’ walk to reveal a pond that led to a river. It’s beautiful, with the kind of eerie loveliness of the twilight before the dawn. She said it aloud, but Jason didn’t say anything. He just pointed to a small canoe that had been hidden behind one of the trees.
“I’d love a canoe ride,” Katie said.
They pushed off, Katie in the front, and Jason steering. Katie had never ridden a canoe over real, non-synthetic water, and once again the experience was enough to push everything else out of her mind.
It was more than just a time that appeared to be early morning. It actually was early morning, and little beams of light started to come from the previously-invisible mists all around them. There was a shooting star in the distance, and both Katie and Jason watched its entire course. Katie smiled. Surely now…still copper.
“Are you all right?” Katie said. Duh, Katie, you know the answer to that one.
“This helps me to think about life,” Jason said. “The canoe, the water…the way that I’m not really in control at all.”
“I feel happy now,” Katie said. It’s true, the beauty, the way that I’m not alone right now and life has more variation…Skye would want me to see this, I know, and somehow…somehow I feel closer to her, doing the things that we used to love. Less like she’s lost forever—more like the things that we shared still mean something.
“I’m glad.”
They rowed in silence. It was quite pleasant, the strokes of the paddles, the ripples of the water, but Jason had been right that her contentment would ebb eventually. There was still the austere world of the Memory Makers in her future, and she would still have to go back to a life that was empty and cold. I’m so tired of hurting. Tired of every breath being a struggle to take the next.
“How long will it last,” Katie said suddenly. “This peace, I mean.”
“How long will we have a pleasant ride on this boat?” Jason said.
The wind, stirring the morning mists, gave mute evidence of the growing perilousness of the journey. “It’s out of our hands.”
“Exactly.”
They continued to row. The sun continued to rise. The stream grew faster.
“You can take us back, can’t you?”
“It’s always come back around eventually before. Once it took three days. I could’ve been dumped any number of times. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“I don’t.” If the boat dumps me I won’t have to go back to the same locked-in world. At least this is really living.
They rowed on. The front of the canoe started to go up and down.
“Do this often?” Katie said.
“Whenever it becomes unbearable. I like the reminder that it’s out of my hands. I also like the danger, and the way that danger…frees me from responsibilities. It’s the river’s job, not mine.”
They did seem close to being pitched, actually. The boat rocked back and forth.
“If you didn’t care, why didn’t you jump out? The water’s deep enough, and it’s like ice,” Katie ventured. Another smart one, Katie. Mention suicide. You never talk about that. Hasn’t he been through enough?
“Why don’t you?”
That made her stop and think. Actually, she felt nothing: no fear, no worry. “…I guess I don’t want to.”
“Yeah. This experience itself is too beautiful.”
Nineteen years old, and all he’s living for is the experience. For that matter, seventeen years old and so am I. Why…?
“I can’t answer your question, Katie.”
“I didn’t…”
“Your entire body said the question that I’ve asked a million times.” He stopped, and leaned back, raising his entire being toward the sky, and the river, and the whole world of invisibility and mists around. “Why. But we can’t see, Katie. We can’t see two feet in front of us. We don’t know.”
She gazed into the mists.
“We don’t even know if the river will smooth out ahead, or if it’ll be rough, or if we’ll come aground, or where, or if the canoe’ll just turn over and no one will ever find us. We just don’t know.”
Two real tears fell into the water. “It doesn’t have to be this way!”
Jason averted those enormous copper eyes and shook his head.
It was still beautiful…the roughness of the river itself contributing to the beauty.
“Why can’t this just go on?” I don’t want it to. Not when he’s still all locked inside of himself. Where are those treasures that I saw once? Where are my dreams?
The canoe ran aground with a thump.
“Oh, well,” Jason said, “Guess we’re safe for the present. Want to go find the ship?”
Katie pulled him aside on the bank. “I only have one more question, I guess. Jason…after talking about all this, I do feel like you’ve let me in again, and I’m sorry for ever locking you out. Will you still be my friend?”
He looked toward the trees with a pained expression. “Katie, it can never be like before. I hold so much pain inside. I can’t be the prankster you knew…I don’t think I ever was. People avoid me, because they know that if they come to love me, they always take the chance that the river will suddenly pitch me in, that they’ll never see me again. Are you willing to take that risk?”
“Don’t you take that same risk when you say you still want to be friends with me?”
Jason stared at her. Suddenly his eyes were amber, and there were tears welling up in those depths. “Damn…”
Then she was crying, and then he was crying, and they sat on the bank and wept out all the deadness and desperation that had kept them hidden from the world.
Finally they sat up and looked around…and everything looked different to Katie.
“Your eyes,” Jason murmured. “They aren’t ice anymore. They’re liquid.”