Patrick's Surfaces XIII

I didn't know how to get back in.

Her writing was too slow. I was desperate to leave the apartment, suddenly smelly and dank, wanting color, wanting danger, wanting her. Imorin. Finally her true name. Imorin. "How?" I kept repeating, "How?" Aloud. With my voice. To the book. To the book, as if the book could hear. Yet, I could hear the book. I could hear Imorin through her words, on the page, which weren't coming fast enough onto the second-to-last page.

You'll have to start again, she wrote.

You'll have to begin at the beginning and read through, not live through, but read through, what you've already lived. We'll be waiting for you. You must finish the book or there is no hope for us. You must live through an ending, or there is no hope for us, she wrote.

So, I sat, where I was, on the floor, and began to read. Beginning with page one:

Wemoreland was in danger of disappearing, of being taken over by rules and constraints, by black and white, by definitions and normalcy and by all the other things that stifle an imagination.

I couldn't imagine having wanted to read this as a younger me. I couldn't imagine wanting to read this this morning. But, the words changed, before my eyes, blurred and came back together as Zachary, it's okay. It's the same story, but you are not the same Zachary. Just come in.

And so I did, I sat and read and I remembered as I read, not the words, no, none of the words, but the story, the steps of the castles, the sharks in the moat, the silver forest, the caves where we met Snate, the bear who led us to the other side, who introduced us to Neptine who guided us through the night to the sire of Kintet and who never left the story. Through adventure and tragedy, with the monkeys, on the boat, rescued and lost and rescuing, trying to put Patrick's puzzles together, to follow the story with his clues, until page 253, where we ran through blue elms and then I left Imorin on the red wood bridge. Page 254 was completely blank, but I was no longer holding the book.