"Elizabeth," she said. "My name is Elizabeth Connelly."
We huddled together on the ceiling of the Roxy through the dawn and the blank horror that is day. When sunset brought us conscious again, we talked through half the night before making the one decision we knew all along that we'd have to make.
It took us almost an hour to reach the Seven Sisters and climb down to the highest point of Thalia.
We stood holding hands at the top of the mast. Radio waves were gushing out from under us like a great wind. It was all we could do to keep from being blown away.
Underfoot, Thalia was happily chatting with her sisters. Typically, at our moment of greatest resolve, they gave not the slightest indication of interest. But they were all listening to us. Don't ask me how I knew.
"Cobb?" Elizabeth said. "I'm afraid."
"Yeah, me too." A long silence. Then she said, "Let me go first. If you go first, I won't have the nerve."
"Okay."
She took a deep breath--funny, if you think about it--and then she let go, and fell into the sky.
First she was like a kite, and then a scrap of paper, and at the very last she was a rapidly tumbling speck. I stood for a long time watching her falling, dwindling, until she was lost in the background flicker of the universe, just one more spark in infinity.
She was gone and I couldn't help wondering if she had ever really been there at all. Had the Widow truly been Elizabeth Connelly? Or was she just another fragment of my shattered self, a bundle of related memories that I had to come to terms with before I could bring myself to let go? A vast emptiness seemed to spread itself through all of existence. I clutched the mast spasmodically then, and thought: I can't!
But the moment passed. I've got a lot of questions, and there aren't any answers here. In just another instat, I'll let go and follow Elizabeth (if Elizabeth she was) into the night. I will fall forever and I will be converted to background radiation, smeared ever thinner and cooler across the universe, a smooth, uniform, and universal message that has only one decode. Let Thalia carry my story to whoever cares to listen. I won't be here for it.
It's time to go now. Time and then some to leave. I'm frightened, and I'm going.
Now.