Would the Universe Unravel
by Madeline Vickers
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
conclusion
Finally, Winifred knocked on Sōley’s door with the news that Mahoma’s condition had become severely critical. Her mother held herself together with strings and wishes, looking over her daughter as understanding dawned in them both, dressed in sleepwear that neither had changed out of. The air was stale and heavy in the house. Her mother stepped into Sōley’s bedroom, approached her daughter where she sat on her bed, and pulled her into a hug.
“It will be soon. We must act, Buttercup,” Winifred murmured simply. Only Mahoma called her that. “You must pick the suitors to come, and we will try to pass the Sun Bond on one match at a time,” Winifred explained. Calm. Reserved, even.
How could she be so calm?
Sōley was hardly paying attention. Her stomach twisted, bile creeping up her throat. Her father was struck down, unlikely to rise.
She pulled out of her mother’s embrace, grabbing fistfuls of her newly shortened hair. Her scalp burned, jagged nails scraping against it. Sōley’s eyes stretched as she stumbled away.
It was so clear to her how imminent the end of the world was. It was her fault. She knew it. If she had just been more capable of love. If she had tried harder. If she had been more likable, a better person, kinder and sweeter and prettier and—
“It’s all going to go down. I can’t—. I’ve killed him!” Sōley breathed the words out. Winifred’s expression was a cracked egg. “Oh, Oh!” she slammed into the back wall of her room, nearly tripping over her chest.
The hair rope.
“Sōley, you seemed smitten, before your father fell ill. Who was it? There’s hope,” Winifred spoke slowly, carefully. The woman held a shaking arm out to her daughter.
Sōley’s hands dropped from her head. She laughed, scratchy and high pitched. “No. No, she... she doesn’t like me back,” her words were seeped in bitterness. “I... I failed. I chose wrong. I—” She cut herself off, seeing Winifred draw her hands to her mouth. Her mother looked afraid for the first time.
Perhaps if they had been wiser, less coddled by their ancestral luxury, they would have been this panicked for years. Instead, it seemed to hit Winifred only now, the reality of it. Sōley couldn’t love someone. She couldn’t even love herself.
The older woman shook her head, bringing her hands down. Pulling herself into a shadow of her usual composure, her mother spoke firmly to her. “We will simply call the suitors, then. Someone will be a match. It must be,” Winifred decided, voice trembling but tone hard set.
Sōley couldn’t resist another laugh. It wouldn’t be.
But Winifred was right. Sōley licked her lips. There was one last thing she could try.
She kneeled beside her chest and pulled out the rope of hair. It was trivial, the value of hair compared to the value of love, but Sōley had been desperate, and she still was. “Perhaps... Perhaps this will work. I can try. Before it ends,” Sōley muttered, standing up and squeezing the rope in both hands. She hurried past her mother.
“Wait... Sōley!” Winifred called after her. Too late, Sōley took off in a jog. The hallways passed in a blur, evening sunlight just starting to glance through the windows. She ran up the stairs, pushing through the double doors that let out onto the rooftop balcony.
Delicate stones decorated the ground. A golden painted railing closed in the four sides. This was the highest point of the house, of the city, where the ritual to pass the Sun Bond was held. A circle of gems glinting in the light marked the center of the rooftop. Sōley stepped up to the middle and faced the setting Sun.
Her skin warmed. Her throat tightened.
“If they could make a ritual, why can’t I?” Sōley hissed out. Her eyes stung.
As she raised her hands, offering the length of rope toward the Sun, it seemed more than trivial; insulting, blasphemous, arrogant. And still she held up her braided hair, praying.
Winifred pushed through doors, up the small stairway and onto the platform, and stopped, beholding her daughter. The woman’s breaths came out heavy and thick. Had she needed to run for anything in her life, ever? Sōley hadn’t, until now. Who were they, who knew nothing of the real world, to claim to be worthy of holding down the Sun? Sōley wondered just how many people in the city would not have failed to love. Many, she thought.
“Stop. We don’t have time for this, Sōley!” her mother insisted, stepping toward her.
Sōley shrank away from her mother’s outstretched hand, nails waiting to dig into her bicep and drag her away.
But the woman didn’t reach. Winifred jerked to a stop. Her hand slapped over her chest. Eyes stretching, mouth falling open, she let out an aching wail.
Sōley saw a light begin to emit from her mother’s skin. It made her glow, tan olive complexion, a beautiful, shifting Sun on Earth.
And then the light died. Sōley’s arms dropped. The rope of hair hit the gemmed, tiled floor.
Winifred cried out again. She dropped.
Sōley lunged to grab her mother’s hand. She scraped her knee, the two of them hitting the ground. Sōley squeezed her hands, the ones that held her when she was a babe, wishing for the Sun Bond to stay.
Her father. “Please stay, please stay, please! Father! Stay!” Sōley sobbed, gasping for air.
No, the Sun Bond didn’t matter. It had left, Winifred’s skin was chilled, but that was nothing compared to what it meant. Mahoma was dead. That was the only thing that could break it so suddenly, so poetically and final.
And now, the rest would follow.
Sōley wrapped her arms around her shaking mother. She held her, suddenly weak with worry for the woman, for their shared grief. Guilt struck her, too late, for leaving her alone in this estate.
“Mama, it’s okay,” Sōley murmured.
Sōley gathered her mother closer, turning to squint at the Sun. How long would it take, for it all to become untethered?
A few minutes, it turned out. That was how long it took for Sōley to realize the Sun was shrinking. It was getting smaller. Was it unraveling, or simply drifting away from them? The evening light dimmed quickly, the Sun retreating with a startlingly apparent pace. Sōley squeezed Winifred, and emotions raged through her.
She was angry. Angry that this responsibility had fallen upon her, and that she hadn’t been able to fulfill. However unreasonable it was, she was angry that Panya rejected her. It hurt, still, in her chest. The maidservant had chosen another... no, not chosen: she’d loved another, naturally and without ill intent. Still, Sōley was hurt.
More than that, she was consumed with jealousy, every bit outside and inside. It felt warm, and at the same time, cold. She was ashamed, most of all. This unwelcome emotion invaded her and enveloped her. She was hurt, scrambling to patch up whatever wound had reopened. Maybe then it would go away, this numbing shock. She didn’t want to unravel in a state of such ugliness.
The Sun was the size of her pinky nail in the sky, and a chill was quickly settling over everything.
Sōley took a deep breath. Screams carried up from the Tethered City below, darkness growing, panic alongside. Sōley wished them all peace, wished she had a way to give it to them. When she fell apart, her cells unbinding and her skin dissolving, she wanted to be at some kind of peace. It was what they all deserved when they died, right?
So, who am I? What have I done in my life? What have I accomplished? Nothing. I am nothing. She bit her lip hard and banished the thought. Well, then, what do I want to become? What do I want?
“Sōley,” her mother whispered, crying sticky tears. The woman wrapped her arms around her daughter’s waist. “My baby girl. I love you. You are loved.”
Sōley blinked. She really... couldn’t remember the last time her mother had told her that. It was foreign. Though she had told Panya she loved her, had Sōley really understood what it meant? Maybe she hadn’t, and maybe she’d never been able to.
She wanted to love and be loved. She wanted to be wanted. She’d wanted this all her life, but when it became too hard, she chose to be alone.
Mortality was facing them all. The grass was unclumping, the Sun was a pinprick. Clouds were floating away. The animals were losing their fur, hooves falling off and flaking apart. The mantle of the earth was separating in layers. Gravity left them, and Sōley and Winifred floated just slightly off the ground.
It occurred to her that it was entirely possible she could have lived and died without ever really being loved at all. She couldn’t look into the hearts of others, couldn’t ever be sure what they were thinking. If she was being honest, her own heart eluded her most of the time. How could she pretend to trust others, when she hardly trusted herself?
Ah, these were the deep wounds that had not healed. Old and deep, scoured over year after year, she felt the cuts on her heart like they were new. Maybe once she’d tried to staple them closed, but it had only made something yellow fester inside. If you’ve ever felt your heart rotten, feared it or seen it, you would know why she shuddered at the thought.
Too late, now, even her memories were becoming untethered.
“Listen, Sun,” Sōley croaked the words out, her voice shattering in the airless space around them. “I don’t want to... unravel. I don’t want to be bound, either. Why can’t we just... find love in our own time... without fear that it means we aren’t anything... when we’re alone?” Sōley pushed the words out, forcing them to be spoken.
Her nails plopped painlessly off their beds. Her nerves were losing their function one by one. Still, Sōley wouldn’t let go. Not yet. She had a point to make, even when everything was being unmade.
“So, go. Don’t come back,” she tried to shout, but it was a whisper. “Don’t let yourself be tethered to us anymore. Take your freedom, take yourself, and go. Find...” Sōley cut off, clutching at her throat. “Where you want to...” — the water was evaporating from her eyes. She floated in the air, ten feet from the crumbling roof, her mother having drifted away and unraveled — “be.”
She squinted at where the Sun had been. Empty darkness, so deep it was almost white, surrounded her.
And then, light.
Just a little. It was enough that the white snapped to black. As if the presence of some luminosity was enough to bring the shadows back by comparison. Sōley didn’t know how she was still conscious. She watched as the shadows grew in contrast. She recognized water in the great distance, millions of liters drifting down. Rocks snapped back together, dust at first, and then pebbles and boulders and mountains. The hills and mountain range she loved fit back onto the ground. Trees knit themselves back together, taking root again. Fish were built scale by scale, returned to the ocean beyond those mountains. Fur settled back onto the backs of deers and bears, antlers and claws sinking into place. Bird nests weaved and rested on trees, the babies’ beaks returning to their chirping place.
All the while, all the while, Sōley watched the Sun return. It grew bigger, quickly, so much so she was worried it would come too close. But then it stopped, perfectly where it had been all her life, all of civilization, and shone.
It spread its rays and reached into all of them, every living and non-living thing, and tethered them. Gentle and kind, with a slow touch of a careful hand, Sōley felt her breath return. She floated down, gravity returning, and her feet came to meet the tiled floor of the Sun House balcony.
Sōley blinked, her eyes burning. Bright and honest, she smiled. The Sun had returned on its own.
She stood tall.
Winifred was settled onto the ground, gasping, next to her. Sōley knew the Sun Bond was no longer in her. It would not be in anyone ever again. She knew, because as her ears had been molded and shaped as they’d once been, the Sun sent a whisper to her across time and space. It said: I didn’t choose to exist. But I choose to be here. I choose to be alive, with you.
And at the same time, Sōley knew it hadn’t just been herself that heard it. The Sun had sent it to all of them, all living and nonliving things. It was here. Life was here. Everyone was tethered together in the shared nature of existence.
Sōley stayed there until the Sun set. And she knew it would rise the next day. And she knew that she would rise the next day, too.
There was something broken in her, but it wasn’t inherent. If Sōley could entice back the Sun, she could regrow her trampled soul. It would take effort. Sōley wanted to sweat for it. “I choose to be here,” Sōley spoke aloud. “I choose, too.”
She had time. She would find a way to forgive herself. Say kind things to herself. And she had tears to shed, grief to feel, wounds to heal, apologies to give, and love to share. And she would love. With doubt and pain and grief, she would love. With hope and kindness and honesty, she would love.
Copyright © 2023 by Madeline Vickers
