Aisling Murphy's Arc

Chapter 12 of 12

Dr. Hartwell signed the last paper and set down her pen. "You're well enough to go home," she said. Aisling had waited a whole extra week for those words. She climbed down from the bed and followed the doctor out the infirmary door. The house waited at the end of the path. It rose two stories, pale yellow with green shutters, its porch wide and welcoming under a steep roof. Aisling knew she had lived here before the fall. She felt nothing when she looked at it, no memory, only the shape of a place that should mean something. She walked up the porch steps anyway. Inside, a small room held a narrow bed and a window full of sky. On the desk sat a blank book and a cup of pencils. Aisling had asked for them days ago. She had decided to keep a journal. If her old memories were gone for good, she would make new ones she could hold. She opened the book to the first page. She drew the cliff from her dream, then the dog, then a field of flowers. Below that she wrote the date. "This is day one," she said to the empty room. "I start here." Then she drew what she had learned. She sketched the moon and gave it a hollow center where aliens waited. She drew others buried under the ground, others hidden in the sea, others slipped sideways into places she had no words for. All of them watched Earth. All of them waited for humans to grow enough to choose their own fate. Her hand moved fast, sure, filling the page. A voice came close to her ear. It was Zyx, though no red figure stood in the room. "You will have more dreams," he said. "Other past lives, other times, other worlds. Learn from them." Aisling kept her pencil still and listened. "But do not forget to live this life," Zyx said. "Learn from it too." The voice faded. Aisling looked at the full page, then at the many blank ones left. She understood what he meant. The dreams gave her the deep past. The journal would hold the now. She needed both to carry the light forward. She set the book on the windowsill and looked up through the glass at the real sky. The old pull was still there, steady and quiet. Tomorrow she would go outside. She would pick flowers from the garden below and press one between these pages. She would start living the life in front of her, not only the ones behind. Aisling closed the journal and left it where the morning light would find it first. She was home. The record had begun.