Two

But not nothing like you think of nothing—at least not like the nothing I was picturing when I bet Michael that there would be nothing on the other side of the mountain. What I meant was nothing special, a valley, maybe some more mountains, a town even. This, though, this was nothing.
I don’t know how else to describe it—the mountain just stopped. It was like some giant hand had come and sliced the mountain cleanly in half from the peak to the base and then lifted its giant portion to its giant mouth and swallowed it down its giant throat. The surface where we stood was exactly what it should have been, dust and just a little bit of vegetation. But just beyond the ridge the mountain was a straight angle, perpendicular to the ground, as smooth and flat as glass, reflecting the whiteness of the nothing beyond. I guess I’d always thought of nothing as being black, like a deep hole, but the white was worse than any dark night.
It was so quiet. I just stood there staring into the dizzying blankness for so long it felt like maybe color and sound had only ever been an imagination—that I’d never spoken, no one had ever spoken to me. The quiet and the white were the force of forgetting, washing over me like a tide. And then—Michael spoke.
“I don’t understand.” His voice sounded choked, muffled by that emptiness. I had to concentrate to hear him, to turn my head and look at him, take in the swirling colors of his shirt and his jeans, his hair and his cheeks.
“What?” I said, dully. My voice came from far away, disconnected from myself. I swallowed and cleared my throat. “What do you mean?”
“I mean this isn’t… it’s …” he gasped, struggling against tears, but I could see them already shimmering in his eyes. “It’s not what she said.”
“What who said? Michael what are you talking about?” I whispered; each word faded away faster than the last.
“The—” he choked, coughed to clear his throat. “The—angel.” He looked so upset, so betrayed. I tried to lift my hand to touch his arm, but the weight of it hanging there was greater than I had thought. My fingers barely twitched, my muscles hardly even tightening in the effort. Michael went on, “I dreamed her.” Somehow his voice was stronger than mine, angry and getting louder just as mine had softened. “She made me dream her, night after night. She spoke to me, showed me this place. But she lied, she said . . .” And then he did cry, a wrenching sob that rippled the stagnant white air in front of us and set it whirling slowly.
It seemed then that a little strength trickled back into me, and this time when I reached out my hand to Michael, no invisible force held me back, and my had rested lightly on his shoulder. “What did she say?” I asked, and my voice was still quiet, but stronger.
“She said I’d find Eden.” He turned to me then, and his eyes were filled with such a desperate hope that I didn’t want to say what I had to say. I slipped my hand from his shoulder to squeeze his fingers.
“Michael,” now I was crying, too. “Eden’s gone.”
“No!” he shouted, and instead of being swallowed by the white emptiness, the sound echoed. It seemed it was hurtling through the air and getting louder by the moment, but then I realized I wasn’t hearing Michael’s shout any more. I was hearing wind—great gusts that whistled and howled and grew ever closer. The white air that before had seemed so solid and still became a mad swirling mist.
Almost before I knew what was happening, the wind was swirling all around us. It was such a shock after the utter stillness; I wasn’t prepared for its push. I staggered forward, wheeling, off-balance and terrified. My hand still gripped Michael’s and I could feel his fingers tighten around mine. Instinctively, I yanked his hand, trying to close the space between us and pull myself upright. But the force of my momentum overcame Michael’s solid stance and we both hurtled forward. My hand slipped from Michael’s, and the thick mist filled the space between us. I was alone in the swirling white.
My feet couldn’t find purchase on the shifting dirt of the mountain. I couldn’t even see the ground beneath me to get my bearings, and each stumbling, tripping step brought me closer to the edge. I cried out to Michael, but the wind distorted my voice, carrying it far away and thrusting it back at me mockingly from all directions. I thought I heard Michael calling to me, but his voice came from all sides. The scrambling and stumbling could have taken me two feet or twenty, I didn’t know. I reached my hands out blindly, searching for anything to hold on to. Suddenly I felt—or I thought I felt—Michael’s fingertips, just barely beyond my grasp. I stepped forward, but with a surge of panic that filled my stomach with ice and fire, I realized I had stepped over the edge and I was falling. There was a huge crack, like thunder or the sound of a giant tree being uprooted.
And I was falling—I was falling, I knew it, but my foot still felt the solid mountain beneath me. There was nothing in the blur of white mist to tell me I was falling, but there was a wind on my face and that unmistakable feeling of plummeting. I was rushing into the emptiness, and the mountain was rushing with me.
Even as I plummeted, my head finally started to protest. This isn’t real, a voice insisted steadily, in control. But… I argued uncertainly. It feels real. You’re dreaming, the voice continued calmly. Ah, I thought. That makes sense. Just another dream to wake up and forget. And—this horrible white emptiness? It will all be gone? I questioned, aching for it to be true. Sure, of course. Look there’s some color already. You’re waking up.
I could see it then, just a speck at first and so far away I couldn’t tell if it was green or grey or blue. But it rushed closer and closer, and I started to see colors, overwhelming in their fullness and vibrance. I’m waking up, I’m waking up! I thought desperately, but the colors were all wrong: not the blurred pastels of my bedroom walls, but the jade of spring grass, the periwinkle of sky, the grey-green of rocks. And then yellow, red, orange, purple, like a bouquet in disarray scattered across a canvas.
I’m not going to wake up, I thought. I’m going to die. The wall of colors rushed up in front of me. I slammed into it, and everything went black.