What if she couldn’t?
Snowflakes speckled the ground; more whirled around her. Above, sheets of clouds covered the sky. Soon she reached the crowded shopping district; Christmas decorations winked from street lamps, and glittering mannequins filled the store windows. Sarah rushed blindly past them through the gathering storm. Walk, she told herself. Keep walking.
* * * *
By midnight, the storm had passed, leaving in its wake a trackless city, becalmed. Snow covered the side streets, and streetlamps cast their bright haloes across the drifts. Sitting on the sofa, wrapped in an old blanket, Sarah looked out the window into the night.
Joe had returned late and had gone to bed. They had not spoken. Now, staring into the winter darkness, she tried to unravel the puzzle of her nightmares.
I could be insane, she thought. I could find a doctor—no, a psychologist, to discover the missing pieces in my past. If, she reminded herself, she had a past to explore.
A sudden chill penetrated her blanket. Throwing the blanket aside, she hurried into the kitchen and, without thinking, lit a burner for the teakettle. As she waited for the water to boil, she thought about her mother, how she had done the same after Sarah’s father died—a midnight watch, the comfort of endless, restless tasks.
But could she trust that memory?
The kettle whistled sharply, and Sarah snapped the burner off.
I can’t let this go on.
She stood in her kitchen and said, distinctly, “Chameleon.”
“Sarah.”
It answered so quickly, she realized it had only waited for her summons. With effort, she willed her voice to remain calm. “Who are you?” she asked. “What do you want from me?”
A long pause followed. Then, “Do you remember your dreams?”
“Yes, but—”
Her vision blurred, then cleared. She saw a blank canvas. The next moment, she saw the outline of a figure—hers. Lines and color and shading appeared, just like the portrait from her dreams, gathering depth and vibrancy, until she saw the moment when the static picture changed into the living Sarah.
It created me. For a long moment, she could not breathe, could not speak.
Still more images flickered past. She saw everything that had happened in the past four months, but her perspective had changed, and she saw herself trapped within another soul. Just as Chameleon must see the world now.
“Let me go,” said Chameleon, “or I will die.”
Her vision changed focus, and once more she saw the kitchen. She swayed and gripped the table’s edge, dizzy from the sudden change. Traces of Chameleon’s raw desperation remained with her, echoed by her own. Now she could sense Chameleon inside, waiting for her to speak.
“If I release you, what happens to me?”
Silence.
“Will I die?” she asked, somewhat louder.
“Yes,” the voice said. “No. We could share the death, the same way we shared life.”
It doesn’t know. Or it doesn’t want to tell me.
“I do know, Sarah.”
Maybe, she thought. “You’re playing games with words,” she said. “Tell me—in plain words—what happens to me.”
“You will live—for a time. I remain inside, but when you sleep, you will release me to feed outside. When you die, the way all humans must die, I go free once more. That is all I can pledge.”
Sarah shuddered. All humans die, she told herself. Even so …
“And if I refuse?”
“You might survive. But will Joe love you, once he knows you aren’t human?”
I am human, she thought, but could not say the words. She was a human with four months of genuine memories. Everything else was an illusion.
A light touch, like fingertips against her thoughts, startled her. “Go back to the clearing,” said Chameleon. “Let me show you what to do. And I promise you memories, good memories, for the rest of your life.”
Sarah shivered, licked her lips. “You’re lying. You want to kill me.”
“No. Without you, I will die.”
Lies or truth or something in between? How could she tell? Her head ached. Her pulse throbbed in a staccato rhythm. Within, she heard the whisper of its thoughts, urging her to act. She had to decide now.
“Lead me to the clearing,” she said.
* * * *
There were differences this time. The ground crackled underfoot. When she brushed against them, the pine needles shivered and dropped to the ground. As she approached the clearing, trees bent away from her path, revealing a blank night sky and a penny-bright moon. Even the air had changed, robbed of the warm pine scent she remembered from her other dreams. Light cascaded over the trees, and a shimmer of sound filled the air. When she stepped into the clearing itself, the hum dissolved into silence.
A brilliant, polished light illuminated the space. Empty this time. No easel, no dark creature painting her portrait. Sarah let a thin sigh escape her.
Then, opposite her, she saw Chameleon.
An electric shock rippled through her. She took an involuntary step backward, but Chameleon immediately beckoned her further into the moonlight. No escape, Sarah thought. She sucked in a breath of the chill air and took three steps toward the center. Chameleon did the same.
For the first time, she saw it face to face. All those weeks, she’d only seen its hunched back—half specter, half darker substance—and its hands, moving rapidly over the canvas. Even when she had confronted it, awake, she’d only heard its thin voice, vibrating inside her.
Its body was darker than night itself, blending into the surrounding shadows. But when it moved, she saw fluttering arms, a swirl suggesting a face, and two brilliant points that might be eyes. Alien. Only its hands—strong, slender curves tapering to the fingertips—seemed human. Those hands had held the paintbrush, sketched her face with masterly strokes.
Chameleon turned its luminous eyes on her, waiting for her to speak.
“Why did you make me?” she asked.
“I needed you—flesh and spirit both.”
“But I’m not the first.”
“No. But of all my children, I love you best.”
It made a gesture and Sarah saw a vision of hundreds like herself—a courtesan in ancient China, a mercenary soldier wandering through Germany’s ravaged farmlands, a dark grizzled crone in a carnival who snatched sustenance from the audience’s wonder. Each chosen from an outline, sketched and shaded into brief reality, they had all crumbled into nothingness.
“You made me different from the others,” she said. “Why?”
Its head jerked away from her. Surprised, she thought. Or afraid. “Not different,” it said. “More alive.”
She shuddered. “Why?”
“To feed. To survive.”
From all these hints, visions and words floating between them, Sarah sensed how long Chameleon had lived on the borders of life. Desperate and starving, she thought, and with a profound loneliness she could only guess at. She felt a reluctant compassion, and wondered if that emotion was from her or from her creator.
“I don’t want to die,” she said.
“And I wish to live.” It drifted closer.
Sarah stilled the impulse to run. “But are you alive?”
Chameleon paused, a motionless shadow. “What do you mean?”
“You feed. You pretend to live. But you aren’t really alive. What if…” She fumbled through her inadequate memories for the right arguments. “What if you dared to really live,” she said, “not just through me, but with me? Think of the emotions you would taste.”
“Inside you, I taste nothing. I starve.”
“Because we’ve remained divided. We have to change that.”
“You would be my companion?” It sounded doubtful.
“More than a companion.” Sarah thought of Joe, alone after his wife deserted him, and from that painful image, she found the words. “We could join together,” she said. “You with me. Both of us with Joe—the way true humans do.”
“The sum of three,” Chameleon murmured. It gazed at her steadily. Slowly it nodded, then held open its arms.
The final telling moment of trust.
Sarah stepped into Chameleon’s embrace. Skin pressed against ghostly skin, and she felt its terrifying urge to comfort her, to kill her, to create her anew. She thought of Joe once more and from that took courage.
“Join with me,” she said. “And we can all three live.”
* * * *
The emptiness of night gave way to morning, to bright sunlight and the sound of Joe’s voice. “Wake up, Sarah. It’s past seven o’clock.”
Sarah stretched and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Joe stood at the door to their bedroom, already dressed for work.
“I dreamed it was Saturday,” she said.
“It’s not. But if you hurry, you have time for coffee.”
“With you?” She offered him a smile. “I’d like that.”
Joe tilted his head, a cautious look on his face. “You look rested. Did you sleep better last night?”
“Much better.”
She held out her hands. Three steps and Joe was at her side. She kissed him, and brushed the hair from his eyes, her gentle caress a wordless apology for all her bitter words. The last of Joe’s reserve disappeared, and he gave her a lingering kiss before he helped us rise.