Chapter 6

    "Why did she leave you?" Kat asked. She needed to know what he thought, how he felt about what she'd done. Whether he really understood.

 

    Instead Matt pushed back from the desk, standing up from his chair. His face was overwhelmed with emotions. "Sorry doc. That's the end of our session for today."

 

    Kat started to voice an objection, to tell him they needed to go on, when the world around her shifted. It wasn't like falling this time, things didn't turn chaotic. One minute she was sitting in that interrogation room, the next she was sitting on a rock beneath a moonlit sky, with Matt nowhere to be seen. It only took a cursory glance around to tell her that she was back on the island, the beautiful island she'd been on earlier.

 

    Did this mean some part of Matt had made a conscious choice to turn the focus elsewhere, to a different place? Perhaps he hadn't been able to handle being in that room anymore. Kat already knew what it had been meant to represent. She'd figured it out only a short while in. The psychiatric hospital, with Matt as a patient speaking to a doctor, was his need to finally be able to tell someone about his problems, to open up about it all. He'd been holding it all in for so long that some part of him needed to let go and talk. That craved catharsis. To release some truths he probably hadn't even shared with the psychiatrists and therapists who'd been medicating him all these years. But it wasn't easy to open up all at once. Perhaps he'd gone as far as he could, to start.

 

    At least she knew now, about his pain, about the suffering he'd hidden from her. How could she have missed it, all that time? She thought she'd known him better than anybody, and in a way maybe she had. But there'd still been so much she was simply clueless to. Could she have helped him more, had she known? Could she have made things better for him, somehow?  It almost made her wonder, was it right what she was doing, trying to bring him back to the world of the waking, if that was what it was like for him? But every instinct she had immediately screamed yes, she had to bring him back. There had to be some way to make things better, to make things right together between them. She could help him, she knew she could, if she was just given the chance. Part of her was mad that he'd never given her that chance before. But she didn't have it in her heart to blame him. He hadn't been hiding things from her out of malice, or to cover up some wrongdoing, he'd just wanted her to be as happy as she could be. She didn't agree with his actions, but she knew he'd had good intentions. He'd just wanted to protect her from the pain he felt.

 

    As Kat studied the area around her, she realized there was no path for her to follow, this time. The rock she was sitting on was at the edge of a meadow to one side, and a forest to the other. All across the meadow were wildflowers, in a beautiful array of colors. She could hear the leaves of the trees rustling in a soft breeze. It seemed the perfect place to stop and rest for awhile, but she knew she couldn't. Every step she took through these segments of Matthew's mind were steps closer to him. And she wasn't going to waste a single moment until she was able to reach him. All she needed now was to figure out where on the island he was, which direction would lead her to him.

 

    Then she caught a glimpse of it, a flash of silver fur awash in the glow of the moonlight. Her eyes immediately tracked towards it and there, at the edge of the meadow ahead of her, a fox. The fox stared at her for a few seconds, let out a single yip, and then turned and bounded into the trees, disappearing from view. Could it have been saying 'Here I am, follow me'? Only one way to find out.

 

    Kat rose from the rock and began to jog over to where she'd seen the fox, but she'd only gotten halfway there when she heard his voice. It was resonating through everything, just as it had the last time. "Kat, it's been so strange lately, and I don't know why. I keep... I don't know... Sensing you, sensing your presence. Sometimes it's like I can hear your voice, or feel you nearby. That's impossible isn't it? I'm just imaging things, aren't I? You can't be dead too. But just a few minutes ago I thought for a split second I smelled you, that perfume you'd always wear, and just the scent of you was enough to bring tears to my eyes."

 

    Matt's voice wasn't leading her onwards, this time. It was just talking to her, but even that was a comfort. In all the other places, incarnations of Matt had spoken to her without realizing who she was. This Matt was truly talking to her, and her alone, he simply didn't know she was there to hear him.

 

    Finally she reached the spot where the fox had entered the trees and she turned to look after him. There, a quick flash of a silvery tail, visible for a second then gone. Kat began slipping through the trees after him, careful to avoid jutting roots and low-hanging branches. "I've seen fragments of you around the island before, but this time it's different. And it scares me, because as much as  I wish I could see you again, you can't be dead, you can't be. You were meant to live a beautiful life, to die of old age, and it hasn't been long enough for that. You wouldn't follow in my footsteps, you're too strong for that, stronger than me."

 

    Kat continued making her way through the trees, following glimpses of the fox in the distance. Every time she was on the verge of uncertainty about where to go, she'd catch a momentary flash of fur that would lead her on. "Maybe this is what it's like to go crazy when you're dead, or maybe I've wanted so badly to see you for so long that I'm somehow manifesting an illusion of you. I don't know anymore. I just know that I love you, Kat. That's the one true constant, in all this. The one thing that can never change. I'll always love you."

 

    She emerged from the trees in front of a cave set into a cliff. Just inside it the ground sloped downward, out of sight. But there, at the top of that slope, was the fox. Even without the moonlight shining directly on it, its fur still seemed to glow with silver light. It was beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful animal she'd ever seen. It stared right at her, yipped once, then turned and disappeared deeper into the cave.

 

    There was no question it wanted her to follow, meant for her to follow, but to what? Was this some piece of Matthew trying to help her reach him? She knew she had to find out. Without hesitation she moved forward, into the mouth of the cave, and began to descend. "If you were really here though, what would I even say? For all the letters I've written you in my head, if we were face to face at this moment, how could I begin to explain? I killed myself, what do I say to you in the face of that? Do I apologize? Do I ask forgiveness? Do I get indignant and ramble on about how it was my choice and I just... Couldn't take it anymore? I'm afraid, Kat. Afraid of how you'd look at me. What you'd think of me. And afraid that nothing I could say could ever truly make you understand."

 

    Kat wished she could just talk to him. To tell him that she would forgive him anything, and that she was trying her hardest to understand. How she'd look at him with nothing but love, and how she just wanted to help him, to be with him. As she walked down the slope into the cave, she expected it to get darker the further away from moonlight she got, but it didn't. It was like the walls were shining with the same silvery glow as the fox, as if the stone above were capturing the moon's light and sending it down through the rock, like blood through a vein, with its radiance showing through the cracks and crevices. "I think, rather than trying to explain, I'd just take you in my arms and hold you for hours. Because everything that really needs to be said has no words. I think if we just held tight to each other long enough, and looked into each other's eyes, you could feel it. How much I've missed you, how much I love you, how I never wanted to hurt you, better than I could ever express with speech."

 

    As the slope leveled out Kat once more caught a glimpse of the fox as it rounded a bend in the distance. As for the cave, it was starting to remind her vaguely of the one she'd seen when she'd first entered Matt's mind, of the chamber she'd found herself in, only without the pool in the center. "For the first time in awhile I feel... Lost, nervous. Like I know something big is looming on the horizon, I just don't know what. Realistically I know you can't possibly be here but... On the one in a million chance that you are, and you're hearing me now. Come and find me, Kat. I'll be waiting for you."

 

    Kat found herself smiling, the sort of powerful infectious smile that would've made anyone who saw her smile too. "I'll find you, Matt. I promise," she whispered softly, feeling in that moment that things really were going to work out. No matter how long it took her, and how many worlds she had to walk through, in the end everything was going to be ok.

 

    That was when she heard it, the soft strains of a guitar. She knew right away that it was Matt, he was the only person she knew who played like that, and besides, who else would be playing in this place? More important was the fact that it seemed to be coming from somewhere in the cave, each individual note seemed to be echoing its way to her, bouncing around from deeper inside the cavern. The music was beautiful, though. Sadness, but with a touch of hope laced through it. At times the echo almost made it seem as if two or three instruments were being played at once, and the strange thing was they were in harmony with each other. The rebounded notes seemed perfectly timed to collide with the newer ones, to create a melody so intense it was breathtaking.

 

    Kat continued to follow the tunnel deep beneath the earth. There were no points where it branched, no alternate routes to confuse her path, just one long winding passage, with occasional glimpses of the silvery fox to lead her onwards. She expected that the sound of Matt's playing would grow closer, more sharp, but it didn't. Rather its haunting beauty seemed to taunt her, echoing from a place just out of reach.

 

    And then one last turn in the tunnel lead her into an open space, and her steps faltered to a halt. The chamber itself was large, though not gigantic by any means, with a few pillars stretching from floor to ceiling. But what immediately caught the eye was the crystals. They were everywhere, jutting from every inch of open space, even from the floor itself, except for very thin walking paths that seemed to have been cleared through them, and even those could only be traversed by walking with one foot directly in front of the other. Inside of each crystal, unmistakably, was an image. And all she had to do was stare at any one crystal for a few seconds, and its image would suddenly blossom in her vision, growing and magnifying until she could clearly see every detail of it. Her and Matt holding hands. Her and Matt kissing. Her and Matt laughing together. Matt's head on her lap as she stroked his hair. Her snuggled up against Matt's side as he thought up a bedtime story to tell her. Hundreds of thousands of moments, frozen in time and gathered together in one place like a treasure trove. Some of them from the time of their relationship, some from when they'd just been friends, but all of them together. Not every moment was perfect, but all of them were made beautiful, in this place.

 

    And the music of Matt's playing was drastically changed by the chamber. It was as if each note was captured by the crystals and resonated outwards, so that the whole room sang out his feelings. She could literally feel his sadness as the music flowed through her, feel his hope and desire, even his fear. The intensity of it drew her heart into her throat until it threatened to choke her. Somehow she found herself taking a few steps down one of the paths without even realizing she was doing so, her eyes drawn to a place behind one of the pillars even before she knew something was there. And then it was revealed, a small circle cleared amongst the crystals, and sitting at its center the fox she'd followed there.

 

    The fox didn't move as she approached, it simply watched her calmly, the glow of its fur washing over the crystals around it. As she reached the circle Kat dropped to her knees just inside it, her arms instinctively spreading open. The fox took one step and then it was in her arms, its warm breath on her cheek, its fur silky against her skin as her arms closed around it, and its smell... Oh god, it smelled like Matthew, it smelled just like him.

 

    The music around her intensified, the feelings it created strengthening with it. The multitude of images in the crystals around her were all growing larger even without her looking right at them. It was quickly becoming overwhelming, but still she clung to the creature in her arms, even as tears threatened to overflow and spill down her cheeks. "I love you, my Fox," she whispered.

 

    She felt its nose press against her ear. And then she swore she heard not an animal whine, but a human whisper emitted from its muzzle. "I love you Kitty. My Kitty."

 

    As the first tears streaked down over her skin, the images grew until they encompassed everything, and as much as she tried to hold on, everything fell away.