Sophie. His Sophie. Almost a young woman now but still his little girl. Her mother's nose. Her father's chin. Eyes that hadn't always been so sad.
Sophie was his daughter. Margaret was her mother...no...Maggie was her mother. Maggie was his wife and Sophie was his daughter and he would have fallen to his knees if he still had knees and if gravity had still held a place in its heart for him.
Defences fell, dams burst and the first wave of an ocean of memory hit him hard, more forceful and traumatising even than those feelings that whirred around in him like sharp, rusted points on a particularly vicious circular saw (guiltfearsadnesslossguiltfearsadnesslossguilt) and it knocked the last of the lightness out of him.
This first memory was the worst, the very worst.
The one he ran from, the one that made him too afraid to wake, too terribly certain of his own inherit wrongness to bear remembering. As it crashed into him, he awaited his destruction, the final sundering of his self.
It didn't come.
Like a miracle, this memory, fierce and wild and thunderous, washed over him and he found, very much to his surprise, that he had survived it and that beyond it, everything took on a different, calmer aspect. He was still drowning but, well, drowning in these memories wasn't so bad really.
Waking up next to Maggie as a young man, her hand guiding that part of him that young men prize most to the part of her young men want most. The first time she told him she loved him, this to a man who never believed himself worthy of anyone's love. The first time he had kissed his daughter's head, the smell of her, her impossibly tiny and fragile fingers curled around his index finger like he was some sort of giant who would protect her and who would destroy anything that might hurt her. Sophie's first word (either Carrot or Karate, there had been some debate as neither the martial art nor the vegetable had been present at the time to lend weight to either argument), her first steps.
Memories of living, working, coming home late from work, getting to work late from home, family road-trips, raucous family dinners (some burnt, some good, some golden), quiet moments with his wife...his Maggie, his lips on hers, her hand on his when he was old and wise enough to enjoy this for its own sake. Minutes that stretched out for years in their little daughter's company.
"I assure you I am not here to trick anyone, young Sophie. I come from a long line of spiritualists. My great-grandmother was the Czar's own palm-reader."
"Uh-huh, and your great-great grandad's dog was a warlock, right?" She didn't give the woman time to confirm or deny this before continuing. "I've heard them all, love," she said, sounding older and wearier than she had any right to. "After Dad died, Mum dragged me around to all these witchdoctors and clairvoyants and mediums and they all had great back-stories, fancied-up living rooms full of candles and Ouija boards and dreamcatchers and what not and they didn't get through to anyone or anything except poor Mum's bank account. Plenty of them pretended of course. You'd have seen better acting on Judge Judy."
This was not the first time he had been called. He knew that now because he remembered and to remember was to know.
There had been other times the hook had caught him and he had seen this scene or ones like it play out but it had always been Maggie or Maggie with Sophie (Maggie looking for him and Sophie watching her mother, worry in her eyes) and each time the grey hints in Maggie's hair became a little stronger and the lines around her eyes became a little deeper and somehow she became ever and ever more beautiful and his daughter had grown in jumps and starts and each time he had looked away from them and he had fought, he had struggled and he had shed their hooks and fled and raced and flown and never stayed long enough or remembered enough to let them weigh him down, to bring him back to the sin he had committed against them.
He was no more a husband, no more a father, nobody's giant, not even a man really. He had shed it all like a skin until there was nothing left of him and then he had soared and exalted and left them to suffer in his absence. He had become mountains and abandoned them to the pit.
ns 18.68.41.148da2
