Chapter Twenty-Six
A Burden Shared
Further Inside The Memory Maze
As I continue to trudge through the winding and suffocating passages of The Catacombs, I feel doubt overcome me in waves. Questions race through my mind as my feet make slow work of the path in front of me.
Where am I going? What lies at the end? Mazes have dead ends. What if I never find my way to The Innermost Gate?
I expend all my physical energy moving through the tight spaces while all my mental energy tries to calm my racing nerves. But once I get a handle on those questions, more assault my mind.
How long have I been in here? How much time do I have? Is Maddy in peril? Do Fate and Time and D know what I’m doing? Can they stop me? Are Rue and Kane at risk? How will this all end?
Nothing ever ends. Not in the OtherWorld anyway.
Everything just keeps going, ceaselessly.
As I seem to be doing here in these never-ending passageways and tunnels.
The way ahead shrinks down to a size that forces me to drop to my hands and knees and crawl forward.
A sense of dread and claustrophobia overtakes me; the walls feel like they’re closing in even further than they are in reality.
I feel like stone, and rock, and layers of bone are about to crush me at any second, though I know the walls are solid.
I try to focus on the simple action of placing one hand in front of me at a time.
Just keep moving, Asher. You must be getting close. Don’t give up now.
Fyre’s flame illuminates a yawning opening up ahead, and I crawl forward until I can reach my full height.
I rise cautiously, the feeling of the walls closing in not quite leaving me even in the open space.
I brush the dirt and grime from my knees, then look up and find myself transported instantly back into the Whitcomb estate, a young man again.
As before, I begin outside myself. An observer of my own memories.
A younger version of me, a living version of me, sits in the corner of the room.
Shoulders slumped and shaking softly. My vision focuses on the space I occupy in the room from my childhood until I am transported inside that head and my eyes see what that younger version of me sees.
I not only see what young Tommy sees now, but I can feel what he feels too.
England, 1858
Moisture clouds my vision of the scene outside the window. The rain pelting against the pane adds another layer of blurriness to the scene in front of me, but I am not concerned with what I can see outside. I am consumed by pain within.
A sound behind me breaks the trance I’m in.
I do not need to turn around to know who has entered the room. Maddy is here now. The smell of lavender fills the room, and my shoulders soften.
Her gentle voice speaks of her even gentler nature. “Tommy.”
My name sounds like a supplication from her lips. There is so much said underneath the single word.
I bring my hand to my face and wipe my eyes. I do not turn around. I do not want Maddy to see me like this.
“Maddy. What are you doing here?”
“I thought I heard crying.” Her voice grows a little louder.
The shuffling sound indicates that she’s moving closer to me, shrinking the distance between us in this room.
“Not from here. Not from me,” I declare feebly.
She’s kind enough to give me the lie.
“Must have been my imagination. Can I sit with you anyway?”
“I’m not much company right now.” My voice cracks in the middle of the sentence.
My father tells me the uncontrollable breaking is a sign I’m becoming a man.
I feel like the uncontrollable breaking I’ve endured over these past months without my mother has already pushed me well past my youth.
My body has yet to catch up at this point.
“I don’t really feel like being alone.” Maddy offers me an in. I take it.
“Me neither, if I’m honest. You can stay if you want.”
And she does. She stays. She quietly closes the distance between us and finds a spot on the other end of the couch to sit.
She sits in the silence with me. She doesn’t make me navigate it alone.
And she doesn’t make me fill it with nonsense.
I wear her soft breathing like armor, hold her still presence like a sword, and I am brave against the world because she has armed me with the strength to endure, simply by being here.
I voice none of this aloud. But I think it all so clearly.
The silence carries us with it until it’s broken by the sounds of soft sobbing, and I realize from the moisture that hits my palm that it is me who’s crying again.
I try to bury my head further into myself, hoping that Maddy won’t see my weakness, but I know there’s no use in hiding from the one person who always seems to look for me. The one person who always sees me.
So, I raise my head, and I do not wipe my tears, and I look to her from my side of the couch, and she looks right back. The faintest smile creases up into her right cheek. Her eyes soften like pillows, and I lie there. From across the expanse of the sofa, I am comforted and healed by her.
“I am thinking about my mum.”
“I imagined you might be.”
“It’s silly ’cause it’s been months. The world’s moved on, but I have not.”
“The world didn’t know her like you did, Tommy. No one did.”
“And now no one will. And I won’t either. I don’t get to know her anymore.”
The smallest crack splits the dimple in her cheek. Then her words tell me what her face has already shared. “I have no words for that, Tommy. I don’t know if there are words for that kind of grief. I think it’s okay to be sad. I know I’d be if I were you.”
“Does it ever stop though? The hurt?”
The confession inside this question, the vulnerability I feel in sharing my weakness, feels like it breaks my tiny heart all over again. But Maddy receives my hurt with such care. My pain feels protected behind her eyes.
She answers with a sadness in her voice, “I don’t know that either, Tommy. I only hope we both live long enough to find out.”
Silence returns to the room. I can feel the soft tap of teardrops slapping against my forearms, but even my crying has lost its voice. For now.
Maddy sits with me for some time. I want to tell her to go, and I do not want her to leave. Eventually, she gets up from her spot and walks toward me. She places her arm around my shoulders and squeezes me into her chest sideways. Without any warning, she places a kiss on the top of my head.
A million thoughts race through me in that moment, but the time to sit with all those feelings will come later. In this moment, one word thrums the loudest, and I sit with the strength of it—safe.
Back in the Maze
My vision of the rain-streaked window pane fades.
The feeling of Maddy’s soft lips tenderly touching my scalp fades.
All pieces of that memory fade from my vision, and I find myself back in the haunting totality of the caves.
But this memory lingers in places I cannot see, but feel even more strongly than before.
The loss of my mother. The hurt and betrayal and confusion of feeling forgotten.
The self-loathing at the selfishness of feeling abandoned by someone who had no control over leaving me.
The comfort of Maddy’s friendship. The strength she passed to me with the softest of touches and sweetest of gazes.
As my awareness returns to the space around me, I hear the same quiet sobbing sound I recalled from those many years ago.
I look down and see my palms, flickering in the low light of Fyre’s weak flame.
And they glisten. They shine with the shed tears that now fall freely from my face.
And instead of resisting, instead of fighting the sadness, I let it go.
I let it out. I allow myself to feel. For now.