Threads in the Wind

I don't sleep and I don't love.

Sometimes when I can't sleep, I watch the moonlight pooling, thick and silvery, over my floor. The edges tremble and waver like quicksilver, and I want to drink it.

Sometimes, I take walks around my city. Everything is dark and sleeping, and you can actually see a few stars in the space between two skyscrapers. A space narrow enough to blot out with a finger. That's what makes it beautiful.

It was on one of these walks that I saw her, dancing by the fountain in the the middle of that plaza that seemed lit up just for her. I knew instantly that it was an image that would haunt me for the rest of my life.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I hate nights. I can never sleep. On nights when the moon is obscured with clouds, or I don't feel like walking, there is nothing to do but talk to the girl in my head. She doesn't have a face. She doesn't have a body. I couldn't even describe her voice for you if I tried. I guess I can't really know if she's a girl or not, but I know she's a girl. Every time, she starts by asking me the same question - "How long are you planning to stay?" And I always have the same response - "Not long. Not long at all. As a matter of fact, I think I will be leaving very soon. I'm just waiting." And she'll ask her second question - "For what?" And I answer, "For my train, I believe. I don't know for sure if it will be a train or not, but I've always imagined it as a train." Then, she will ask her third and final question - "Where do you hope to go?" And I give my third and final answer, "To a star." After that, the girl dissipates and I'm alone again. Occasionally, since she forgets easily, she will visit a few more times in the night and ask me all the same questions again. I give her the exact same answers.

When I can't bring myself to love, I am not so easily remedied. There is nothing I can do for myself that would ease that pain that isn't a pain at all, it's a numbness, a hypothermia. All I can do is wait for the pain-that-isn't-pain to pass. And it doesn't always.

On rare nights, I suppose I do sleep, if I can call it that. It isn't a real sleep, though - it's a shallow, fleeting submergence into the bilge of my mind, something I try to rouse myself out of once I realize it's come upon me, then realize that I didn't want to do that at all. And of course, I never dream.

So imagine my surprise when one fitful night, the clouds getting blown back and forth over the moon, I sleep - and I dream. And I dreamt of a mermaid, a girl with a face and a body but no voice, staring at me from under the surface of a stream. The water was so clear, I could see straight down to the bottom, to the fine sand and waving water-plants. The girl stared at me from under the water, her eyes a deep, opaque green and her scarlet hair undulating and catching around her pale limbs. She did not breathe. I didn't know how long we stared at one another, but then I felt myself wake up. The image was still sharp and vivid in my head, and it took the rest of the night for it to fade even halfway.

This alone would have been be a milestone, but the very next night I have the same dream - the same river, the same girl, her same piercing green eyes. Except this time I saw she was not a mermaid, she was a fully human girl. The girl was still wearing her clothes in the stream; they were sodden wet and clung obstinately to her watery form. We stared at each again, but this time, there seemed to be something urgent in her eyes. I knew something was wrong. The girl writhed under the water, as if trying to free herself from an invisible net, and a line of skittering bubbles escaped from her mouth. I woke up, and I knew that this girl drowned.

The third night, the girl spoke to me. She swirled in the water, buffetted by several opposing undertows, desperate to keep eye contact with me. She opened her mouth, and I could barely hear her words, waterlogged as they were. "My name is Aislinn," she told me. "I drowned myself, eleven years ago. They didn't know if I meant to do it or if it was an accident. Please. Find my family, and tell them..." Here, a sudden current of water rushed up against her, and she was carried down the stream. She reached an arm out toward me, panic in her eyes. I ran to keep up with her. "Tell them," she called, "that I meant to do it, and that I'm sorry, I wish I hadn't." I spoke my first words to her then - "Do I know you?" I asked. But she floated down the stream faster than she could give an answer. I woke up.

The word "Aislinn" was on my lips.

The next day, I got off the bus and was walking down the sidewalk when a window display of TV's caught my eye. Twelve plasma screens were all showing the same nature program, the camera panning a narrow stream with glowering canyon walls rising steeply on either side. And suddenly, I remembered something. When I was a child, we took a trip to a similar canyon. We hiked alongside the river, but I lagged behind at one point, having noticed something my parents passed by completely. On a sharp cliff overlooking a particularly deep, rushing part of the river, stood a woman, her crimson hair blowing in the wind. I stopped, staring, even though I knew it was impolite. The woman stood on the very edge of the cliff and I felt like warning her to be careful or she would fall over, when suddenly, her gaze alighted upon me. We stared intently into each others' eyes for I didn't know how long, five seconds or half an hour. And then, without warning, she leaned forward, pivoted slightly around, and dropped into the water with all the elegance of a falling leaf. I stared at the ripples her body created for a long time, or maybe it hadn't been a long time at all, but all of sudden I realized how far behind I was and started running back up the trail, calling frantically for my parents.

I never told them what I saw. I never told anyone. I'd sealed this up for so long, I even managed to halfway forget it.

But I was certain now. And I knew exactly who Aislinn was.