In ancient Greece a clue was just a skein of yarn until enough mythical figures unraveled their ways out of mazes

**

The world does not end in 2000, and Amy graduates from college at age eighteen

Six days later she flies to Paris, France. When she disembarks at Charles de Gaulle, her fingertips are still indented from the edges of her armrests, and her knuckles are still white, but she walks quickly down the walkway and out into the airport as though she knows where she is going. And she finds the baggage claim and claims her luggage—an old off-white suitcase of her grandma’s, from before suitcases had wheels—and walks out, past the throng of those awaiting the arrival of their relatives and friends. She keeps her eyes on the ground: a grayish white, with parts of footprints and occasional black scrapes. Halfway through she thinks she hears her name, but she stays focused. Soon the room gets lighter, and she begins to hear the street.

By now Amy’s been on four airplanes—seven if you count this trip. She has not yet ridden public transportation. She is looking forward to taking trains. Now she faces a big steel machine she believes must sell the tickets, but the faces of its buttons have worn off, and the screen is so scratched it is hard to tell what the words underneath are. Her eyes get glassy, and all she is aware of is the glassiness of her eyes. 

Then a man behind her clears his throat. Amy notices she’s sweating. She’d like to take off her sweatshirt, but that would only take more time. She taps at a button, but the metal doesn’t budge; her grandma’s suitcase gets heavy in her other hand, and when she glances down she sees a trickle of dark liquid emerging from its closest corner. She drops it quickly, takes a ginger step away.

Where do you wish to go? says the man behind her, and she whirls around and peers into his face as though he’ll tell her.

Paris, she blurts, as he reallots his weight from his right hip to his left. Then she reiterates: I wish to go to Paris.

Then you cannot go there in this way, he says. She admires the way he says it, without hesitation. Then you cannot go there in this way, she thinks. She chants, in silence: Then you cannot—

He bobs his head, extends his arm towards a door that opens and closes at irregular intervals whether people are approaching it or not. The man keeps his palm perfectly parallel to the floor, as though he’s holding it in place. A bus, he says. That way.

Amy hesitates because it takes her time to conceive of not taking the train. Not only can she not imagine it—the current boundaries of her imagination are the perforated edges of the gray-scale map in the inner pocket of her purse—but also she has no idea how she will ever figure out where she is going without sticking to the original train route.

There is no train, says the man. There is a strike.

Amy does not move. Amy does not even breathe.

There is a bus, says the man. He extends his arm again.

Amy bends her knees, never taking her eyes off his, and she grasps at the air till she lands on the handle of her grandma’s suitcase. She picks it up. Then you cannot go there in this way, she thinks, and she nods a nod that seems to clear her head. She glances down at the black puddle on the floor and then out at where the man is pointing.

Merci, she says, and blushes, and then sets off.

The elevator’s out of order, so Amy hoists her grandma’s suitcase up the stairs, making an intermittent trail of small black splotches

Despite knowing the instructions word for word, Amy takes them out of her purse again and uses them to find her room. She sets the suitcase down on the narrow swathe of marbled carpet between the desk and the twin-sized bed. She crouches down beside it, tries to catch her breath. She scrapes at its heavy silver clasp, but it doesn’t budge, so she pries harder, but then it gives and slices right into her knee.

At the abrupt eruption of her blood, she faints.

Amy has the same dream she has had a dozen or a hundred or a thousand times

All the things on the earth come unstuck and fly off into space very fast. Their mother is a mermaid and stays in the sea; she glints like a knife. Amy looks for Zoe but she can’t breathe. Thens he sees Zoe off in the distance against a black black sky, smaller and smaller and smaller.

But then it is the middle of the afternoon, and Amy is in Paris.