Miles came back to himself slowly, and what came back was less than he expected. There was no body to gather up. There was no breath to draw, no weight to settle, no ground under anything. There was only a thin attention, fraying at its edges, coming loose a little at a time, the way ice lets go of a roof in sun, silently, without protest.
He did not look back. Whatever had been before was closed to him, sealed behind the thinness, and he did not reach for it. He knew only that he was here, and that here was almost nothing at all.
The dark was not a place. It had no floor, no sky, no near or far that eyes could have used. But it was not empty.
One way, and he knew it was a way the way meltwater knows a slope, the current ran. It was wide, and it was sure, and it moved without water, a long smooth going in a single direction, and it pulled at the loose edges of him, patient, unhurried, certain. It was his. That was the plainest thing in the dark. It was open to him, and it would take what was left of him and carry it onward, away, toward whatever came next. The current did not wait. Moving things do not wait. It only ran, and it ran for him.
The other way was not a current. It was a thread, and it was failing. He perceived it the way he perceived anything here, without eyes: a thin spun thing in the dark, frayed along its length, what had been many strands come down to a few, and the few trembling. Its light, if light was the word, wavered and went thin. It did not reach for him. It only went on coming apart, quiet about it, and along its length it leaned toward somewhere he could not see and did not look, where the thread was anchored, and the anchor was giving way.
It was Lei Yi's soul-thread.
Two ways, then. The current that was his, smooth and certain and running one direction. The thread that was not his, trembling, letting go of itself strand by strand. He perceived them both, and he did not move. The loose edges of him lifted in the current's pull. The thread shivered in the dark that was not a place. Between the two, what was left of Miles hung, thinning, turning its thin attention from one way to the other, and held there.
He had perceived the thread without looking into it. There was a difference, and he knew it the way he knew anything here, without organs for knowing. Perceiving told him the thread was failing. Looking would tell him what was failing. He turned his thin attention to it now, and for the first time he took in what the fraying strands contained.
There was almost nothing.
That was not a judgment. It was a measure. The thread held sensation, and the sensation was raw and unkept: hunger with no name and no memory of being answered; light that arrived as a blow, too much, every time; sound without source or sense, only loudness; startle that shook through and left nothing behind it. Sensation with nothing under it. Nothing gathered. Nothing carried from one moment to the next, nothing learned, nothing kept. No face. No name. No yesterday. The thread was days' worth of new, and the new had not had time to add up to a life. There was no one in it yet, only the raw material of someone, fraying.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
He had had eighty-two years.
Whatever those years had been, however they had been spent, they had been his and he had lived all of them. They added up. Even spent poorly they added up, and a whole life was more than this. This was hunger and light and loudness and nothing else, a beginning that had not begun, and it was coming apart strand by strand in the dark.
The current pulled at the loose edges of him. It was his. It would carry what was left of him onward, and onward was more than nothing, and he had not been offered more than that, only that.
He declined it.
There was no stepping back here, no refusing with a body, so he declined the only way there was: he took his consent out of the current, and it ran on, patient, unhurried, and it was not his anymore. He had had his turn. Eighty-two years of turn. The child had not had any.
He did not know the rules of this place, if it had rules. He did not know what a remnant could do for a thread, or whether it could do anything at all. He knew only the direction of his choosing, and it ran one way. He had been offered a going-on, and he gave up his claim to it, and in its place he put the child: Lei Yi, who had had no life and deserved one.
The thread trembled. The current ran. What was left of Miles hung between them, no longer turning, the deciding done and settled in him like a stone set level. He did not move. There was nothing left in him to decide.
The current went on without him. He felt its pull slide off the loose edges of him, patient as it had always been, and for the first time since his dying he was not drifting toward anything. There was no away here. Away was a word for places, and this was not one. There was only attention, and where he put it. He took his from the current the only way there was, which was to put it somewhere else.
He put it on the thread.
Lei Yi's thread trembled where it frayed, dim and new and coming apart, and nothing in him could slow that. He did not try. Trying would have been a kind of spending, and he did not know what he had to spend, only that it was his and that it was all of him there was.
So he gathered it.
It had been coming loose; he understood that now. The current had been patient because it could afford patience. Loose things drift, and drifting things arrive without ever choosing to. He stopped drifting. He drew the looseness in, not toward the thread and not back toward the current, only in, the scattered edges of himself settling toward one another, remembering the shape of being one thing. It was slow work for something with no hands. Each piece he drew in made the next easier to find. What had been a thinning, a fading by degrees, began to hold.
He did not touch the thread. The failing in it was not his to answer, not yet, maybe not ever; he did not know what a remnant could do, or whether a remnant could do anything at all. He only came alongside it and stayed, near enough that its trembling ran through the gathered shape of him, near enough that if there was ever something he could do, he would be there when the time of it came.
The thread frayed on. Somewhere apart from him, the current ran. Between them, what was left of Miles Coultier held itself whole beside the child's failing thread, gathered and unspent, all of him in one place for the first time since the dark had taken him. He did not know what he was keeping himself for. He kept himself anyway.