The Perseids and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

really a child, the child she had lost inside herself. But that was all right. He had missed the child in Rachel. “All right, a picnic,” he said. “But we don’t have any food.”
    “We don’t need any.”
    He reached for her hand, but his fingers closed on nothing. She was still not a whole, substantial thing. Rachel shrugged at his disappointment and led him with a look.
    The jeweled scarabs on the forest floor scuttled away from her feet.
    He was content, at least for a time, to let questions wait. Rachel led him to a clearing where the chaos of the forest floor gave way to a sort of mosaic of living tiles, hexagonal and octagonal, slate-gray and ochre. It was heartbreaking to watch her kneel on that yielding and lichenous surface pouring imaginary tea into imaginary cups.
    He knelt beside her. “Rachel?”
    “Yes, Jacob?”
    “What do you remember?”
    “A lot. More than I used to.”
    “Do you remember Mama and Papa?”
    “Of course.”
    “Are they here?”
    She shook her head.
    “Are you alone?”
    “Yes.”
    “Except for me,” Jacob said.
    “Except for you.”
    “And Mr. Ziegler.”
    She frowned. “Sometimes.”
    “Anyone else?”
    “Just shadows.”
    “Aren’t you lonely?”
    “I’ve only been here a day,” Rachel said.
    It was a flexible day, Jacob presumed, like the seven days of creation, which somehow encompassed the Age of Fish and the Age of Reptiles. “Aren’t you cold at night?”
    “There isn’t any night.”
    Disconcerting, this childish obtuseness, almost an unwillingness to
understand
his questions; but Jacob reminded himself that she was only part of a human being. The better part, surely, but still only part.
    If Rachel died, would Rachel be whole again?
    “Don’t you miss home, Rachel?”
    “I don’t miss anything at all.” She regarded him quizzically. “How did
you
get here?”
    “Chess,” Jacob said automatically.
    “Oh.” As if it made sense.
    And they passed more time in silence. There was no sign of Ziegler, no sound or motion but the swarming of the rainbow-bright insects above the forest canopy. At length he told Rachel, “You know I can’t stay.” Time had passed on Earth. The other Rachel, the wounded and angry Rachel, might need him—might have fled Taglieri’s room or even fought with him.
    “Play with me before you go,” Rachel demanded regally.
    Jacob nodded and raised an imaginary cup of tea to his lips. “It’s very good,” he said.
    She smiled.
    She began to talk more freely then.
    She reminisced about the Brant Street School and the Settlement House, about the docklands and the shops. She talked about Mama and Papa. Jacob immersed himself in her chatter, knowing that this was why he had come, not to visit Rachel but to revisit her innocence. Despite the strangeness of the surroundings—the shining trees, the pinpoint sun that never left the summer-blue sky—he was unwilling to force an end to the visit.
    After a time they stood and walked. She took him to the brink of a gently rolling hill, and he saw the forest running unbrokento an impossibly far horizon white with radiant light. Every world a growing thing, Ziegler had said. As many afterlives as caverns in the earth. As above, so below.
    A tree had fallen here, a broken universe as opaque as ebony or black pearl. They rested against it where the scarabs had not yet begun to eat. Rachel’s eyes glowed and she seemed more physically present than ever. “I’m sorry, Jacob,” she said.
    “For what? There’s nothing to be sorry about.”
    “I’m sorry for all the times I hurt you. Called you names, humiliated you.”
    He reached for her hand. “You remember that, too?”
    Her eyes clouded. “I think … I remember everything now.”
    Jacob touched her hand, and this time there was palpable substance to it. Her hand was cold but he was able to wrap his own fingers around hers.
    But that was wrong.
    She was immaterial, half-present, because (Ziegler had insisted) she was