Let That Streak of Crimson Stain Her Entire Fate

The rain began in the afternoon and went on into the night.

Rain in Revaea was usually quiet, as though every drop had first been given its place. Water gathered in a line along the eaves and fell into the shallow stone channel in the courtyard. It never swelled without warning, and thunder rarely came with it. Xirayu sat beside the window for a long time, listening to one drop after another. Only when the daylight had faded did she remember that she had meant to sort the photographs on the wall.

One of the photographs near the bottom had been there for years. A steamboat was crossing a river, pale gray smoke trailing behind its funnel. The hull had opened the water into a wake that ran all the way toward a far bank too distant to make out. She remembered standing on that deck with something clenched in her fist. The wind had been strong, and someone beside her had laughed while warning her not to lean too far over the railing. But when she tried to remember who it had been, all that remained was a blurred sense of closeness.

Xirayu wiped the frame with a soft cloth, then suddenly stopped.

There was now a speck of red in the gray-white water behind the boat.

At first it was no larger than the point of a needle. She thought the photo paper had grown damp and wiped it again. The color did not disappear. Instead, it lengthened half an inch along the wake. The red looked fresh, still wet as though it had only just been spilled, and beside the river faded by years, it seemed almost offensively out of place.

She leaned closer and smelled it.

There was the faintest trace of iron.

Three knocks came at the door just then, neither loud nor soft. The third arrived a little later than the first two. Xirayu set the photograph back on the table and went to open the door. IGCrystal stood in the rain with unmelted snow resting on her shoulders. The rain had done nothing to it. Every flake remained a clean, regular hexagon in her silver hair and upon her scarf, though all of them seemed dimmer than usual.

“You dreamed it again?” Xirayu asked.

IGCrystal did not answer at once. After stepping inside, she first looked toward the wall of photographs, as though making sure nothing there had been disturbed. Only then did she open the right hand she had kept closed.

A wafer-thin piece of crystal lay in her palm. Its edges were transparent, but a thread of vivid red ran through the center, narrow as a vein trapped beneath ice.

“It was in my hand when I woke up,” IGCrystal said. “I’m not hurt.”

Xirayu showed her the photograph on the table. The red inside it had lengthened again. It now followed the steamboat’s route all the way to the edge of the frame.

For a while, neither of them spoke. Outside, the rain continued in the same measured rhythm, though the room had somehow grown much colder.

“What happened in the dream?”

“The sky split open.” IGCrystal kept her eyes on the crystal. “After that, every sound stopped. I felt as though I were standing very far away. Or perhaps I wasn’t standing anywhere at all. I could see snow pass through my hands and fall into every corner of the world, but I couldn’t tell whether I still had hands.”

“And then?”

“Something red came toward me from a long way off.”

Xirayu waited for her to continue. IGCrystal shook her head.

The dream had already begun to come apart after she woke. She remembered only that streak of red crossing the wind and snow, as though someone had dragged a long wound across the white plain. Or as though a road that had never existed had suddenly run from the end of the world to her feet. Whatever happened after that refused to return. Each time she tried to reach it, a rest stretched on inside her mind until every image sank into darkness.

This was the seventh time she had dreamed of the same sky.

The first six times, she had brought nothing back.

“Let me go in and look,” Xirayu said.

At last, IGCrystal raised her head. The weariness in her eyes was faint and carefully hidden, but Xirayu had spent too long with old photographs not to know where a person’s gaze paused when they were forcing themselves to look calm.

“That is the future,” IGCrystal said. “The future should not become a memory.”

“But you forget it every time you wake.”

“Things that have not happened are under no obligation to be remembered.”

Xirayu lowered her eyes and touched the red line still growing across the photograph. The glass kept her fingertip clean, yet the iron smell had become stronger.

“It has already come looking for me,” she said.

After midnight, they went to the far north.

The ruins where IGCrystal had awakened had long since disintegrated, leaving only foundations buried beneath the snow. Now and then, wind passed through the empty height above them and stirred the remnant of the old bell’s resonance. The sound was brief and came from no direction Xirayu could name. It was like someone in another age brushing a fingertip against the bell.

IGCrystal stood at the center of the vanished ruin and placed the red-veined crystal in the snow. The moment it touched the ground, the falling snow stopped. Thousands upon thousands of flakes hung in the air, each reflecting a different scene: someone raising a roof over ruins, someone waving beside a river, someone looking back across a great distance, and an entire city sinking into sleep beneath a deep violet shadow.

Xirayu took three photographs from her pocket.

One showed her mother holding her when she was small. One had been taken while camping on the mountain, the fire warming every face with red. The last showed the steamboat crossing the river. The red wake behind it had already passed beyond the photograph and left the faintest color upon her fingers.

“The photographs can bring you back only three times,” IGCrystal said, watching her. “Each time you use one, the memory inside may be left behind.”

Xirayu did not put them away.

“What happens if I haven’t come back after the third?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then don’t close the dream.”

She stepped forward.

Her foot came down on no snow.

It felt like passing through a sheet of water standing upright. Cold sank swiftly from her forehead into her chest. She heard IGCrystal call her name from behind, but the voice stretched farther and farther until it became the low whistle of a distant steamboat. The white light before her went out. In the next instant, she was standing on an unfamiliar street.

The rain had not followed her.

Only wind and snow remained in this world.

Every lamp along the street was lit, but no one walked beneath them. Someone slept folded over a windowsill, a book still held in one hand. A child leaned against a doorstep with a dried tear marking one cheek. Farther away, a group of dream-weavers lay across the square, thought rings floating above them and flickering in and out.

Deep violet ether kept pouring through a rent in the sky. It destroyed no buildings. It simply made everything slower. Banners ceased to move. Fire paused at the instant before going out. Even the snow fell with unbearable slowness; a single flake took an age to descend the width of a finger.

Xirayu followed the long street north. She knew IGCrystal was there. Dreams had no signposts, yet the certainty lived deep inside her body, tangled almost inseparably with fear.

Before long, the road ended.

Deep violet shadow filled the street ahead. There was nowhere inside it to place a foot. Xirayu took out the first photograph and pressed her thumb against her mother’s face. The photo paper warmed. An arm reached out from the frozen image and steadied her shoulder, just as it had done countless times when she was a child.

A short length of the old house’s wooden floor appeared beneath her feet.

She crossed the shadow upon that piece of memory. When she reached the other side, her mother was still holding the child in the photograph, but her face had become a field of overexposed white. Xirayu stared at the blankness and could no longer remember what color her mother’s clothes had been. She remembered only that the embrace was warm and carried the mingled smell of food and laundry soap.

She held the photograph against her chest and went on.

The closer she came to the far north, the more severely the world broke apart. Stars slipped free of their courses and began to fall slowly from the heights. Whole stretches of connection between the thought rings went dark, and the light that remained drew long gray shadows across the snowfield. Streets where she had once lived, mountains and rivers she had once seen, had also been mixed into the ruins of this future that had not yet happened. Some were already destroyed. Others still looked exactly as they had in the past.

The dream was borrowing her memories to complete its missing details.

The second time there was no road forward, Xirayu took out the photograph of the campfire.

Flame rose from the edge of the paper without burning her fingers. Friends whose faces she had long ceased to remember returned to their places around the fire. Someone tossed pinecones onto the burning wood. Someone else laughed so hard they nearly knocked over a bowl. Xirayu walked among them while the campfire held back the deep violet ether lunging after her. She wanted to stop, if only long enough to hear their voices once more, but the laughter inside the photograph was already receding.

By the time she left the firelight, the campfire remained, but everyone in the picture had turned their backs to the camera.

She could no longer remember a single one of their names.

At last, the dome of the far north appeared at the end of the wind and snow.

A translucent musical staff descended from the broken sky and crossed the land. The melody had reached its final bars. IGCrystal stood beneath it with a bundle of white flowers held in both hands. The edges of her pure white and pale blue skirt were coming undone. Grainy light peeled away from her body and rode the wind toward the sleeping city.

Xirayu ran toward her.

The distance did not close.

With every step, the snowfield grew a new length between them. It was not space resisting her. The future itself refused to admit that she was there. In the dream as it had first been dreamed, Xirayu had never reached this place. Perhaps she had already fallen asleep with everyone else. Perhaps she had gone somewhere even IGCrystal had not seen.

The third photograph crumpled in her fist.

The steamboat remained in the middle of the river. Its vivid red wake now crossed the entire surface and pointed beyond the photograph toward a far bank that did not exist.

Xirayu raised the photograph into the wind.

The whistle blew.

The sound came from a river long ago. It crossed mountains and cloud and struck the dome of the far north. The snowfield shook violently. At last, a broad river opened in the distance, and an old steamboat broke through deep violet waves, sailing from Xirayu’s feet toward the place where IGCrystal stood.

She leapt aboard.

There was no one on deck. The warmth of palms remained on the railing, as though many people had once stood there, waving toward the opposite bank. Xirayu took hold of it and suddenly remembered that, on her first crossing, someone beside her had said there was nothing especially remarkable on the other side. It only seemed so far away because she had never been there.

She still could not remember who that person had been.

When the steamboat reached the far shore, the photograph went completely white. There was no river, no boat, not even Xirayu standing on the deck. Only the red line remained, running through the paper.

This time, Xirayu finally stood before IGCrystal.

The IGCrystal who belonged to that future opened her eyes. She showed no surprise at seeing Xirayu. Her gaze rested upon the blank photograph as though she had always known Xirayu would come.

“There is no place for you here,” she said.

“Then I’ll make one.”

“This is my dream.”

Xirayu had to catch her breath before she could finish the sentence. “That’s why you’re alone. Even in your dreams, you never leave room for anyone else.”

IGCrystal seemed about to smile, but in the end she only lowered her head. Her fingers were turning transparent. The white flowers slipped through them and became snow at their feet.

“Go back,” she said. “What you are seeing is only one possibility. It is not worth losing what truly happened just to hold on to it.”

Xirayu reached for her wrist.

Her fingers passed through.

IGCrystal’s body had no warmth and no weight. This future had not yet happened, so it could not be touched, carried home, or made into part of the past that LandfillLand bore. Once the dream ended, every trace of it would scatter. IGCrystal would forget again how the sky had broken and why she had stood here, until one day it truly came to pass.

The final note on the staff began to move.

The whole world sank slowly with it.

Xirayu watched deep violet ether drown the distant city. She watched the final thought rings above the sleepers go dark, and IGCrystal’s shoulders begin to dissolve into faint light. She reached out again and caught nothing. In her panic, her palm came down upon a broken shard of crystal.

Pain arrived all at once.

Its edge cut through her skin. Blood welled along the lines of her hand and fell onto the snow.

It was a color that had never existed in this dream.

Crimson burned almost painfully bright between gray-blue and deep violet. The first drop neither froze nor vanished beneath the snow. It sank quickly into the ground and raced outward along the lines of the musical staff. The second fell upon IGCrystal’s transparent wrist, and the contour that had been impossible to touch suddenly gained weight.

The world answered with a low, heavy tremor.

Only then did Xirayu understand where the red line in the photograph had come from.

It was not a warning left by some future.

It was her own blood.

It had flowed backward from years that had not yet happened and landed upon the old photograph before she ever entered the dream. Cause and effect closed their circle. At last, the dream acknowledged her: she had been wounded; she stood here; she had watched IGCrystal dissolve with her own eyes. Whether or not this future ever came to pass, from now on it would remain in Xirayu’s memory as something she herself had lived.

The price revealed itself at the same moment.

Her mother’s voice was the first thing to fade. Then came the laughter around the campfire, the smell of wind over the river, and the warmth of the steamboat deck beneath the sun. Every piece of the past she had spent to reach this place began to be swallowed by the future. The farther the crimson spread, the wider the blankness in her memory became.

“Stop.” IGCrystal caught her bleeding hand.

This time, she could hold it.

“If you continue, you’ll forget why you came here at all.”

Xirayu looked at her. She was already beginning to lose it. She remembered a wall of photographs. She remembered rain. She remembered someone standing outside a door with snow upon her shoulders. But the reason she had followed that person to the far north had begun to blur at the edges.

The musical staff was still sinking.

Xirayu did not answer. She pressed her other hand into the snow darkened by blood.

Crimson burst across the entire dome of the far north.

It climbed the cracks in the sky, passed through extinguished thought rings, and grew wildly along every path the future might take. Within that red light, Xirayu saw endings that contradicted one another. In some worlds, IGCrystal lost all form in the wind and snow. In others, a hope not yet named woke her from the long sleep. Some worlds were covered by the shadow of TragicLys until the blue sky became an endless black. And among one field of ruins, pale cherry-colored feathers of light were falling while a silver-haired girl crossed a cold corridor barefoot and bent down to embrace someone who was still crying.

Those futures had once excluded one another. Only one could become real. Now the same crimson ran through them all and forced every one of them into Xirayu’s memory.

She did not choose an ending for the world.

She only refused to let any ending disappear without a sound.

The final note at last came down. IGCrystal broke apart before her and became frost flowers scattered across the sky. In that instant, Xirayu did not feel death. She could feel IGCrystal still existing inside every snowflake and within the faint light beneath the earth. Only the boundary that could be held had vanished.

Before the wind and snow swallowed everything, she heard IGCrystal leave behind one final sentence.

“So that red was you.”

Xirayu woke before dawn.

She lay in the snow where the far northern ruin had once stood. IGCrystal was kneeling beside her, wrapping Xirayu’s hand in her scarf. The wound was deep, and blood had already soaked through the mist-blue cloth. The crystal that had once been transparent lay between them. A red vein now ran inside it, impossible to remove.

“What did you see?” IGCrystal asked.

Xirayu looked at her for a long time. The person before her had clear edges. Warmth passed through the scarf into Xirayu’s palm, and her breath became a small white cloud in the cold air.

“You didn’t disappear,” she said.

IGCrystal’s hands stopped.

“I saw you scatter. You scattered into the whole world. Later, some people woke from the light you left behind.” Xirayu arranged the words slowly. “That isn’t disappearance. At least, not the kind I have known.”

“Was that the ending?”

“One of them.”

“What about the others?”

Xirayu closed her eyes. Countless incompatible images surged out of the dark and sent pain through her temples. She saw IGCrystal return, and she also saw her fall into a deeper shadow. She saw Revaea rebuilt from ruins, and she saw every star go out. These things now carried the weight of true memory. She could tell the direction of every wind that had blown through them, yet she could no longer remember her mother’s face.

“I remember all of them,” she said. “But I don’t know which one will happen.”

On the third day after returning from the far north, Xirayu stood once more before the wall of photographs.

All three had changed.

Light had erased her mother’s face. The people camping on the mountain had been reduced to their backs. The steamboat and the river had disappeared into white paper. Only that thread of red remained. It passed beside the arms in which her mother held her, crossed the campfire, ran over a river that could no longer be seen, and finally slipped into the wall behind the frames.

She took every frame apart and still could not find where it ended.

Afterward, whenever IGCrystal dreamed of the future again, the old wound in Xirayu’s palm split open. There was never much blood, only enough to leave a small red dot on the gauze. At the same time, another world that had not yet happened would appear inside her memory. Some futures lasted only a few seconds. Others stretched across many life cycles. Some vanished because of a choice IGCrystal made after waking, while others grew clearer with every passing day.

Xirayu began to give the wrong date from time to time. She could find her way home through streets she had never visited. She remembered words spoken by people who had not yet been born, yet no longer recognized the faces of her childhood friends. At night, while sorting the photographs, she often knew exactly when a picture would fade, but had forgotten who had pressed the shutter.

Once, IGCrystal offered to sever the connection for her.

It was raining that day as well. Xirayu sat beside the window and unwound the bandage from her palm, loop by loop. The wound had long since healed, leaving only a narrow red scar that ran from the center of her hand to the bone of her wrist.

“What happens after you cut it?” she asked.

“You’ll slowly forget those futures.”

“Will you forget them too?”

IGCrystal did not answer.

Xirayu wrapped the bandage around her hand again. She worked slowly, and with only one hand to use, she tied an ugly knot. IGCrystal watched for a moment, then reached over, undid it, and tied it again.

Neither of them spoke of severing the connection after that.

Many years passed. Or perhaps only one cycle reached its end. Memory alone could no longer tell Xirayu which.

On another rainy night, a distant bell sounded from the far north. The red crystal on the table lit in answer. Its glow passed through the roomful of silent photographs and cast a long, narrow shadow upon the wall. IGCrystal stood outside the door, just as she had many years before, with snow in her hair that would not melt.

“Do you remember me this time?” she asked.

Xirayu looked at her.

For a while, the name of the person before her would not come. She knew only that she had seen her in many worlds: awakening among ruins, running beneath the sun, hiding her gaze inside a scarf, and standing in gray-blue wind and snow with a final bundle of white flowers in her hands.

Then the scar in Xirayu’s palm gave a small ache.

“I remember.” Xirayu picked up the red-veined crystal and walked to the door. “At least this time, I remember.”

A very thin, deep violet crack had appeared above the far north. It hid behind the clouds, still invisible to ordinary eyes, but the shadow it cast was already creeping across the distant courses of the stars.

IGCrystal turned and walked into the rain.

Xirayu followed her.

The door closed behind them, leaving only the wall of photographs in the room. In the oldest picture, the steamboat still had not returned. Her mother and the people around the campfire had become little more than blurred outlines. Yet the crimson line was still moving. It followed the pale grain of the paper, crossed the wooden frame, climbed the wall, and slipped through the window into the rain-dark night.

Far away, the bell sounded a second time.

The red line did not stop.