Laughter spills down from the High Line.
Built along a defunct rail, the raised park runs down the western edge of Manhattan from Thirtieth to Twelfth. It’s normally a pleasant place, with food carts and gardens, tunnels and benches, winding paths and city views.
Today, it is something else entirely.
The Artifact has consumed a stretch of the elevated rail, transformed it into a dreamlike jungle gym of color and light. A three-dimensional landscape of whimsy and wonder.
At the entrance, a volunteer gives them colored rubber bands to wear around their wrists. A rainbow against their skin, each one providing access to a different piece of the exhibit.
“This will get you into the Sky,” she says, as if the works of art are rides at an amusement park.
“This will get you into Voice.” “This will get you into Memory.”
She smiles at Henry as she talks, her eyes a milky blue. But as they move through the carnival of free exhibits, the artists all turn to look at Addie. He may be a sun, but she is a shining comet, dragging their focus like burning meteors in her wake.
Nearby, a guy sculpts pieces of cotton candy as if they were balloons, then hands out the edible works of art. Some of them are recognizable shapes—here is a dog, here is a giraffe, here is a dragon—while others are abstract—here is a sunset, here is a dream, here is nostalgia.
To Henry, they all taste like sugar.
Addie kisses him, and she tastes like sugar too.
The green band gets them into Memory, which turns out to be a sort of three-dimensional kaleidoscope, made of colored glass—a sculpture that rises to every side, and turns with every step.
They hold on to each other as the world bends and rights and bends again around them, and neither says it, but both, he thinks, are happy to get out.
The art spills into the space between the exhibits. A field of metal sunflowers. A pool of melted crayons. A curtain of water, as thin as paper, that leaves nothing but mist on his glasses, an iridescent shine on Addie’s skin.
The Sky, it turns out, lives inside a tunnel.
Made by a light artist, it’s a series of interlocking rooms. From the outside, they don’t look like much, the wood frames shells of bare construction, little more than nail and stud, but inside—inside is everything. They move hand in hand so they won’t lose each other. One space is glaringly bright, the next so dark the world seems to plunge away, and Addie shivers beside him, fingers tightening on Henry’s arm. The next is pale with fog, like the inside of a cloud, and in the next, filaments as thin as rain rise and fall to every side. Henry runs his fingers through the field of
silver drops, and they ring like chimes.
The last room is filled with stars.
It is a black chamber, identical to the one before it, only this time, a thousand pinprick lights break through the obscurity, carving a Milky Way close enough to touch—a majesty of constellations. And even in the almost dark, Henry can see Addie’s upturned face, the edges of her smile.
“Three hundred years,” she whispers. “And you can still find something new.”
When they step out the other side, blinking in the afternoon light, she is already pulling him on, out of the Sky and on to the next archway, the next set of doors, eager to discover whatever waits beyond.
