Homecoming
For some it is The Call. Others say it is The Summons. I just know that I woke up and felt it. There was a feeling tugging at my heart. After all those years wondering whether I was one of them, now I knew. I felt joy, but I couldn’t express it. It was not good manners.
My reflection gave nothing away. I looked exactly like any other day. Long black dress, my hair falling at my sides, my bangs framing my face. No smile in lips or eyes.
I walked to the tube station. In my way I came across other people. Some I recognized; after all, we make the same trips every day. Some I did not. I had the feeling that every one of them looked at me differently, as if they knew. Full of envy, maybe even hatred. But that was absurd.
Wasn’t it?
As I went down the tube station stairs I realized I had no ticket. Even more than that, I had no idea where I was going. I shivered. Someone will notice, I thought, as I stopped before a tube map. No commuter ever stops to look at a map. It marks you.
I must have seen it thousands of time, but it was as if I was looking at the map for the first time. I noticed it was a maze of names of impossible places and coloured lines that led nowhere and everywhere at the same time.
I closed my eyes. I looked inside me, breathed deeply and opened them. I stared at the map again.
There. Borges Square. Invisible Line. Of course.
The ticket. I had no ticket. I walked over to the ticket machine. Someone inside me told me to place my hand on the touchscreen, so I did. The machine went blank for an instant, then it spit a ticket. On it I read “Borges Square. Invisible Line. Platform 5.”
I didn’t recall ever having seen a Platform number 5, but I took the escalators down one level, then another. I walked into Platforms 3–4, and then I noticed the sign. An arrow pointing to a side corridor that said “Platform 5”.
I thought people were watching me as I walked calmly into the corridor to Platform 5, but nobody followed me. The corridor opened into an old-style platform. I sat on one of the wooden banks on this side of the rails and waited. There was nobody I could see.
I don’t know how long I waited. I really don’t know. I think I fell asleep.
But the train came. Howling and screeching and braking. I stepped into the car and it sped off. I was no longer alone. Another girl sat several seats beyond. She could have been my twin. But I have no twins. The train stopped and she just stood and left.
She never looked at me.
The train started its trip again. I noticed it picked up speed and made no stops. The tunnel walls were just a blur beyond the windows. I decided not to think about it, but I felt scared. I closed my eyes.
I felt the train decelerating, then coming to a stop, but I didn’t open my eyes. I heard the gates opening. I felt no more movement. I opened one eye.
Borges Square.
I don’t know why, but I stayed there, immobile, for a couple of minutes. I know, because I counted the seconds in my head. The train didn’t budge.
And then I just stood and ran off. The doors hissed closed as soon as I set a foot on the platform, and the train left in a cloud of smoke. But it wasn’t a steam rain, was it?
Borges Square station was different. There were no escalators. No way to go up to street level. But there were signs. Arrows. One arrow here, one arrow there. All of them pointing in the same general direction.
I followed their indications, and found myself in the maze. How it came to be here, inside a tube station, I cannot know, but there it was. The labyrinth, with the Tower in its middle, that I could see no matter where in the maze I went. The walls moved, shifted. But I didn’t mind. By then I could hear the voices in my head clearly, guiding me. My steps were sure and I never faltered.
And so I found the Gate at the foot of the Tower. It was locked, but I knew what I had to do. I touched it, and I saw it dissolve into dust. The voices became a singing chorus.
I looked inside. The Tower looked impossibly tall, stretching out upwards and downwards. And on its walls, row upon row of books lived, and their spines and their covers and their pages and their words sang and yelled at me, calling me sister and telling me to join them.
I took a step forward, and a narrow corridor formed under my feet, until I stood in the center of the infinite cylinder, framed by the door’s square of light. I extended my arms and looked up, taking in the songs that told me of dead poets and authors long gone.
I leaped. As I felt them embrace me and welcome me, I knew for sure.
I was home.
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This is my accompanying entry for the Weekly Writing Exercise: July 11–17, 2016 on the Writer’s Discussion Group in Google+. I am responsible for creating the prompts for the Exercise, so I don’t take part, but I still like to write a story each week.
This week I chose one of several library-related images I’ve collected. Later, I thought I should have chosen several together and let the participants stitch them together. Or not, as they saw fit. But I hadn’t done it; I had chosen just this one.
I had the idea for the story early on, but in the end I wrote it late on Sunday night, when usually I try to have my story earlier. But life’s as it is. I also wrote it in one go, which I always like to do. I enjoyed my little story quite a lot, if I may say so. I also enjoy the little liberty I give myself by not sticking to the 600 word limit the WDG participants have. Cheater, that I am.
