Don’t try and do words. Just think.
He thought: Think?
Think.
Think. Think think think.
No, think.
I am thinking, you stupid woman.
Ah, got something. Irritation. You’re annoyed about something.
Suddenly, Theo felt very, very tired. Nevertheless, he ushered everything else out of his mind and imagined –
Himself. Himself, falling. Not all that difficult to do, actually. Himself, letting go of the handrail and slipping through the gap between the rail and the floor he couldn’t actually see, and falling, arms flailing, legs kicking –
Oh for heaven’s sake. It’s all right. You’re perfectly safe.
Head swivelling helplessly from side to side, mouth wide open in a wordless, silent scream –
Don’t be such a baby. Come on. Let go of the rail and take my hand.
He looked at her. She wasn’t holding on to the rail. Instead, she was leaning forward slightly, holding out her pink-woolly-mittened hand. On her feet she wore grey sheepskin boots, standing (apparently) on thin air poised twenty thousand feet over an unspecified ocean.
I haven’t got all day, you know.
Ah, the great leap of faith. The ones you get to hear about, of course, are the ones that don’t end in long drops and messy landings. History tends to skate over those: the aeronautical pioneers who proved that it’s not possible to fly simply by jumping off tall buildings flapping your arms like a bird. For every Wright Brother there are ten thousand equally earnest believers who got scooped up and buried in jars, and whose memories weren’t preserved by succeeding generations, because nobody wants to admit they’re descended from an idiot. On the other hand, it was painfully obvious that he couldn’t stay where he was indefinitely: his fingers were getting numb from continuous feverish gripping, and he had cramp in both legs from hanging at an awkward angle. Oh well, he thought. He let go, grabbed wildly with his left hand and closed it tight around a full set of slim, wool-covered fingers.
Good boy. Now stand up. There, now. What was so difficult about that?
It’s a million miles to the ground and I’m standing on a thin sheet of glass, and – Well. Now she came to mention it, nothing, really. Simple. Straightforward. Easy as falling off a –
Whoa. Steady.
Easy, and let’s not mess with images of falling off anything. Instead, he equalised his weight on both feet, straightened his back and imagined himself saying, Thank you.
You’re welcome. Now, let’s get in out of the wind, shall we? It’s a bit nippy out here.
She turned and walked, and he followed, keeping his eyes glued to a small area of duffel coat covering the place between her shoulder blades. Occasionally, roughly every thirty steps, he felt his foot skid a little on the glass. Ignoring it was possibly the hardest thing he’d ever done.
Just when he’d resigned himself to spending the rest of his life staring at six square inches of coat, she stopped. He adjusted his focus, and saw that she was standing in front of a door. It was just eight planks nailed to a couple of crossbars, but when she pushed it, it opened. He followed her through it, and suddenly there was a visible floor instead of blue water. His head swam and he staggered, and fell back into, of all things, a chair.
“Here we are” said a female voice. “Sit down and make yourself at home. I’ll get you a nice hot cup of tea.”
“You’re talking.”
“Of course I am.” She’d gone into another room. “It’s much easier talking than thinking. But you’ve got to think outside because the wind’s so noisy.”
The voice he was hearing wasn’t anything like the voice he’d imagined to go with the words condensing inside his head. It was younger, higher, more ordinary – someone you’ve just met in the street, as it were, rather than a goddess or a guardian angel. He considered the room he was in. Bare wooden walls. Some kind of fibre matting on the floor. A low wooden table, with a wooden bowl of apples and slightly brown pears. The chair he was sitting in and two others. No electric light, just a sort of Venetian blind arrangement set in the ceiling like a skylight. No metal of any kind to be seen anywhere.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” he said.
“What?”
“Nice…” She was looking at him with her head on one side, like a bewildered dog. “Doesn’t matter. Where is this?”
“You don’t—?”
“No.”
“I see. What’s the matter with you?”
Where to start; oh, where to start? Fortunately, a stray seed of inspiration