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A bath would have set the world to rights, he thought. Nothing like a stew in lukewarm water until one’s fingers prune to put the mind at ease. It was his whole intention, his top priority—but Copia sat on the edge of his bed, suited and booted with his paints crusting off, until the sun had long dipped below the mountains and the fire had sputtered into cinders.
His shutters, which he’d usually have closed by now, were open into the night. His joints ached from staying in one position too long. He was chilled in his thin shirt and inadequate suit jacket but couldn’t bring himself to care. The bathtub called to him, all bubbles and steam and a relief for his weary knees, though the journey to get there seemed an insurmountable challenge. Copia ran over it in his mind; he’d have to stand up, cross to the en-suite, turn on the tap to let the water heat up—he didn’t get much further than that before his head span.
Getting things done was something Copia had never had a handle on. He’d hoped he could chug on through his new role, maybe teach an old dog—himself—some new tricks. Somewhere on his desk was a post-it note reminding him to visit the library in the valley and find a good book on productivity. It had been there two months.
His inability to up-and-at-it was worsening. Sometimes, this reality made him want to cry. The apathy stamped that out before his eyes began to sting.
On the edge of his bed, Copia stared down at his legs. The black cotton slacks grew blurry. Somewhere far away he was willing them to move, to take charge and break free from whatever paralysing hold his mind had over his body. He tried to speak in the hopes that talking to himself would ground him again. No sound came out.
Perhaps he’d spoken too much that day. He had more people under him now than he’d previously known existed—who knew the Clergy was so large? Every department demanded his involvement, and he’d been discouraged from pulling the Oh, well, keep doing what you’re doing, alrighty?
Whatever hint of pride he felt in his new position could not hold a candle to the weight of his overwhelm. He hated his uncertainty, and hated his need for instruction more. No matter how often he was told this promotion was deserved, he was still a child on a lead and reins when it came down to it. Nothing he did seemed to change this, not that he could muster the energy to do much—
Copia blinked. The room had darkened such that he couldn’t quite tell where his trousers ended and the floor began. The fire must have died completely, but he couldn’t raise his head to check. Just the thought of movement made his earlier dizziness return. His fingers wouldn’t when he tried to grip the sheets under his palms. He itched to pull his feet up from the floor, away from the sea of black that blurred them. A distant shame scolded him for being afraid of what lurked in the dark but his fear had never felt more rational. His back was exposed, facing the open window that must now be a gaping black mouth through which the wind bit the back of his neck.
The wind picked up, carrying with it the sting of midwinter, but Copia had begun to run hot. Sweat prickled under his arms, between his legs, and beneath his too-tight collar. He felt liquid; as if he were about to melt. Like the rapidly growing wind would sweep his body out from under him. His stomach clenched and swooped in time with the gusts, a bodily response that should have grounded him but instead dragged him deeper into the maelstrom. He was indoors. He didn’t understand. This was more than bad weather. This was more than—
A drop of water landed on his foot, and he was moving.
Its chill made him stumble from his bed to the floor like he’d been dropped. On hands and knees, he shuffled away from the spot where the rain had landed, his shoes scuffing on the wooden floor.
His shoes? He’d felt it on his—
The wind knocked him sideways and his shoulder hit the ground. Copia cried out and flinched in anticipation of pain, but the impact was like hitting something wet. It dipped and folded under him until he was struggling up, up, up to his feet and clinging to the footboard of the bed like he was about to fall again.
It was there that he saw the window. Black as he’d imagined—darker than he’d ever known. He would see the mountains from there on a clear night, outlined by the light of the moon, but tonight had consumed it all. The sutters thudded against the outside of the building, torn from their supports by the storm. Net curtains burst into the room and reached for him with desperation; the longer he clung to the bed and watched, the more the piercing scream from outside seemed to come from them. Rain spattered through and hit… his foot—
The wind roared but he heard the flutter of paper like it called to him.
“Stop,” he whimpered, knowing before he saw it. “Stop it.”
A photograph on the mantelpiece, loose and unframed. It was propped up in the centre. Pride of place.
Three black-and-white figures stared back at him, frozen in time just as the paper was suspended on the wind. His mother, his father, and himself; his father’s hand rested on his shoulder, above the jewelled chains pinned to his jacket. His mother stood behind, wearing the same pinched-cheeks expression of authority that she had since his first memory of knowing her. It was a shame, he thought, that this was the only photo of the three of them alive. Perhaps more were out there, but none with the same intent as this—a family picture. Mother, father, son.
Mother, father, son.
“Stop,” he said again.
The wind did not heed his plea. It took the photo in its clawed grasp and tossed it from the mantelpiece, taking it up in a billowing current towards the high ceiling, snatching it out of his reach just as he threw himself across the room. His hands flailed at the air as he tried to grab it, but his palms met with nothing between them, an unanswered prayer. He stumbled again but chased the paper, its white backing stark and bright against the cavernous window, calling for him until the last moment—when it paused, held in a blink of stillness, its three offupants facing him, ever-open eyes saying goodbye —then fell, down and down and down into the night.
“Give it—give it back—!”
Copia’s stomach hit the windowsill, knocking the breath from his lungs. He fought for purchase on the edge as he hung over it, shouting to nobody even as the storm drowned his words. He couldn’t see a thing outside; there wasn’t one glimpse of the white paper, nothing breaking up the suffocating dark. Fear rose hot and sharp in his throat but he didn’t heed it. All he knew was what had been taken from him.
—and he was in the eye of it, outside the Ministry, his shoes sinking into wet ground that ay shrouded by deep, thick shadows, kicking up mud as he staggered forward like a dog to the scent. He didn’t remember getting here. He must have taken the quick route, the winding staircase and the servant’s corridor, out of the table doors and across the snow—
The snow that must have melted since the day. He couldn’t feel it under his feet. The more he walked the more sodden the ground became, until water was gushing over the tops of his shoes and soaking his trouser legs. It ran in rivers across his path but he couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from.
Nothing mattered besides his hunt. Copia walked as if his body wasn’t part of him, his mind taking the reins with such dominance that he wasn’t allowed to grow tired. He didn’t feel the water at his ankles, or the strain of wading through it. The path he took wasn’t one he recognised. He was pulled down it like the currents at his calves were guiding him that way, and who was he to fight it? He couldn’t see what lay ahead—he was at the mercy of the floodwater.
The night wasn’t black as it had been before. He noticed it first as a reflection in the water, where purple light dipped and danced into the ripples on the surface, unnaturally bold. It grew sharper as he walked, carving out a spreading view of the floods around him until—
There, in the distance, swirling in eddies and buffeted by the waves, was the photo.
White paper in an indigo sea. His legs grew heavier with every step he took towards it. Distance stretched and warped, tugged at his skin and pushed him back, putting up a fight that he met with frantic perseverance. His outstretched hand cut through the thickening purple glaze. He pushed through water that had swelled to reach his waist.
All at once it was there. He reached out to grasp it but the paper was soft under his fingertips. His hand closed around it anyway, and wet paper crumbled apart through the gaps in his fingers. He caught one last glimpse of his mother’s face—grey and stern and real—before the photograph fell to mush in his fist.
Copia didn’t cry out. He held the soaked remnants of his family and looked up, at the ever-rising surface of the water, that cold light granting him, for the first time, a view of it all.
There was nothing but the water; no mountains, no Ministry gates, not a star in the sky to break up the monotonous blaze. Struck with a loneliness that caught in his chest, Copia turned in the churning waves until he was facing the way he’d come, still holding the photograph that was now nothing more than mulch.
Time had disintegrated in much the same way. He couldn’t recall how far he’d waded, or for how long. But when he spotted the Ministry—as easily as he’d seen the paper from so far away—it was but a shape on the horizon, a silhouette that became something unreachable. The longer he looked, the further it seemed to disappear. Despite its distance, a clear image found its way to him; purple-drenched stone, the colour dripping from the spires, engulfing windows and gargoyles and leeching into cold marble halls, saturating the corridors until the floors and the walls and the ceilings were choking on it—
In his solitude, the water reached Copia’s chin. With one hand fighting the swell and the other clenched tight, he went under with a name on his lips.
“Mamma —”
And he was awake, scrambling to sit upright, his bare skin slipping against the sides of a bathtub.
Copia couldn’t see a thing through the water in his eyes. He fumbled blindly for the edge of the bath, his lungs burning and throat tightening around a mouthful of bathwater. He found the edge and hauled his torso over it, stomach clenching as he coughed up soapy water onto the floor.
He didn’t stop to consider the idiocy of this manoeuvre. With adrenaline-fuelled effort he dragged himself up and over the edge of the bath, stumbling and landing at an awkward angle, knowing nothing besides his desperation to get out.
On the floor, dripping onto a bath mat, Copia sat and tried to calm his racing heat. He coughed, wiped at his eyes, and hugged himself when he began to shiver. He fixed his gaze on the water that puddled on the floor, the metal walls of the tub, the grey tiled floor, willing away scenes from the dream that still filled his mind’s eye.
It was only when he’d knocked the water from his ears that he heard the drips—it was the cold tap, right above where his foot would have been as he lay there.
“Oh,” he said out loud, and coughed again.
He’d been told that focusing on his surroundings was the best way to handle something like this. Copia fought for the stability of here and now, but no meditative trance could wipe away the chill that had nothing to do with the bathroom air.
Panicked all over again, he got shakily to his feet and stepped over to the door, not pausing to fetch a towel. His feet left damp tracks on the rug in his bedroom but he didn’t heed them. He stopped only once he saw his window was shut, with the shutters bolted and the curtains drawn.
He sat, hard, on the floor beside his bed.
It was with a jolt in his belly that he realised the direction he was facing. He looked up to the mantelpiece, and that suffocating dizziness returned when he saw the empty space in the centre where the photo had been. His head pounded and he pushed his fingers into the fibres of the rug. But even as his fear crested, the wrongness of the image behind his eyes snapped him out of his daze and into the arms of sanity, for the first time that night.
“Ha,” he muttered, without humour. “Silly me.”
That space had always been empty. Such a photo could never have existed.