physics – Page 20 – A Piece, of the Sky

fire and ice

Dani could see Bear Claw cabin through the dormant tree branches. She grabbed hold of a clump of brittle bramble in her gloved hand, to steady herself on the muddy shore. The trail couldn’t be far away – or at least Dani hoped so, because she couldn’t stand ducking and weaving through the underbrush. The thin, dry branches snagged on her wool cap or conspired to bend over double, under the weight of her hand, before springing forward to smack her in the eye. It was harder for her because she was tall, almost seven feet, a former starter on her high school basketball team.

These days she studied pi mesons at Caltech, with her college buddy, Cara. Pat was her life. Pat could read her faster than the blurbs on the jackets of her new novels. Dani turned back toward the cabin. The pale green copper chimney was nestled above the trees. Now, if she could just watch where she put her feet, she might get home without rolling her ankle again.

“Dani!”

One moment, she was facing the cabin and the next moment, she was watching Pat disappear through a dark, blue hole in the ice. The moment stretched; Pat’s arms seemed to lengthen and undulate in the air.

Dani waved at her. Pat smiled at Dani, before glancing toward the cabin. She had always eyed Cara, Dan’s friend, a track star in college. But she didn’t think Cara would ever fancy her. Cara had a sly, fast, devilish, cosmopolitan look, that suggested that she favored Italian women in pastel pantsuits.

Pat had rather flat, limp hair. She wore a sagging black winter coat, so that she could buy Dani the newest cerulean smoking jacket to impress her friends at their local alumni club. Cara had a new color for her socks at every dinner party and subscribed to Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.

“We’re almost there,” Dani was saying, up on the bank, between the trees.

“Sure thing,” Pat had answered.

The cracks had been too faint to hear.

frau holle not wotan wild hunt spirits

Ran sat in the well. The sky was white. The pods of newly unfurled leaves floated down, the donations of the beginning of spring. She stared up at the yellow-green waif-like plants, and then looked at the well wall in front of her, an impenetrable gray surface, down there in the gloom. In Maine, on Kaan’s property, she closed her eyes, soul moving around the darkened barrier, to a room beyond, a dim room, with red carpeting, in a château, in the south of France.

The room was ornate, set in a Baroque style. There was a grandfather clock, giving off a muffled clicking, over-wrought side tables and a resplendent golden davenport, made in Italy in the 1600s. A glass decanter of port sat on the heavy walnut desk of the study. The room opened out into a balcony. Translucent, white chiffon curtains floated upward, in the breeze of the late summer afternoon. Nealy stood just inside the doorway, with a glass of wine, in a beige three-piece suit and a red ascot, heavy golden rings on each hand.

Nealy turned as Ran slunk out of the shadows in the room, still wearing the jeans and cashmere sweater she had been wearing at the bottom of the well. The wind rustled some papers on the desk, held down only by a fountain pen.

“This needs to end,” Ran growled, “She is my girlfriend now, not yours.”

“How do you know that she ever stopped being my girlfriend?” Nealy asked. Beyond the balcony, the full, broad leaves of summer danced in the gentle gusts.

“She broke up with you years ago. We may look alike, but you’re on the other side of the world. I am the one she has now!” Ran said.

Nealy looked down, studying the glass of port, “No, you are the double, the clone. I am the true girlfriend.”

“Why, you -!” Ran choked out, and rushed forward, not knowing what she would do. But Nealy looked up, with a frozen glare. Ran felt herself transfixed, riveted with terror, under the unrelenting gaze. The pages got loose, from under the pen, and whipped around the room.

She woke up, eyes roving the ceiling, raking the room for any signs of the château, the chandelier, the bronze candlesticks.

Ran found herself back in her bedroom, in New York, Alli asleep, and unaware, reclining beside her.