First to Dance (11 page)

“I hardly see how good memory could be a curse.”

“It is when you’re the only one,” he said. “But with you here, I suppose I’m not the only one anymore.” He winked at her and smiled.

Ayita
returned the smile but not the wink. “I suppose not,” she said.  She bit into a long green vegetable. It made her teeth feel funny and all her fears of becoming forgetful were at the front of her mind. She didn’t want to eat, but her stomach was begging her to.

“Are you ok?”
Ziyad asked her. “You don’t look well.”

“I haven’t been eating,” she admitted. “I’m concerned that the
se strange foods are what make you forgetful.” As soon as she said it she realized how funny she sounded. She expected him to laugh at her, but he didn’t.

“It might be the food,” he said. “Or it might be the air, or the water. If it is, I don’t see that you really have a choice. But,
if I were you, I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ll probably be okay.”

Ayita took another bite
of the vegetable. She asked Ziyad what he liked to eat most, and chose to take those same foods for her meal. She cradled her breakfast in her arms and started walking toward the table-top tree she slept beneath. Ziyad walked beside her. As she walked toward the tree, she studied it and realized that this was her new home. She didn’t know how long she would be living here, but she knew that it very well could be for the rest of her life. She sat down in the tree’s shade and wondered what kind of a home this planet would be.

“Tell me about your winter
dwellings,” she said.

The question startled him.
It seemed to come out of nowhere on this warm sunny day. He sat down beside her and started talking. “They’re big, with walls all around. They keep out the wind and the cold. And they’re tall, like two homes stacked on top of each other. But they’re all spread apart. They’re not clumped together like our homes here.”

What he described sounded to her like real houses, but she couldn’t imagine anyone voluntarily living beneath a tree instead of in a house. 
“How many are there?” she asked.

“Many,” he said.
“Too many. Everyone becomes divided in the winter. It is in the summer that we come together again, as a family.”

But not
Dakarai
, she thought.

“Why did you land here?”
Ziyad asked, deliberately changing the conversation, and he turned to watch her face as she spoke.

“I didn’t mean to land here,” she said. “I was
trying to go to Earth.” She thought about her experience in the spaceship, and wondered if she should tell him that someone else caused the crash. She decided not to say anything about it.

“Oh,
” he said. “So you don’t really want to be here.” He sounded disappointed. 

Ayita forced a small smile. “Well, no, not really.” Ayita realized that until this point, she had numbed her disappointment with curiosity. She
’d become so busy learning about this new place, and there was so much to learn, but she still desperately longed to visit Earth.

“
Well, now that you’re here, what do you think?” he asked, interrupting her thoughts.

“
It’s okay, I guess. I don’t feel quite as alone here as I did at home.”

He leaned up against the trunk of the tree and stretched his arms.
“In a couple of weeks,” he said, “people will have forgotten about the crash entirely.  Those who continue to recognize you will think that you’ve lived here with us your entire life.  That they don’t have any early memories of you won’t confuse them.”

“Does no one have memories of their childhood?”

“Oh, they do, but very few of them.  Sometimes it takes the right word, or the right sound or place to bring their memories back.  Then they’re forgotten again.”  He leaned back his head and sighed.  “What I’m saying is: you’re bound to feel very alone anyway.”

“Is that how you feel?”

“Sometimes, yes.”

“Would you leave, given the chance?”

Ziyad ignored her question, and asked her, “Did you sleep here last night?”

“Yes.”

He smiled.  “This is where I used to sleep.  But it was only for one summer.  I found myself feeling more alone here than usual.  It was easier for everyone to forget me when I wasn’t around them all the time, and easier for me to forget them as well.”

Ayita pondered this for a while and wondered about
Dakarai.  She felt drawn to him in a way that she couldn’t explain. Maybe it was his music, or that look in his eyes when he spoke to her. “Does Dakarai forget because he spends so much time alone?” she asked eagerly. “If I spend enough time with him, would he start to remember me?”

Ziyad
didn’t want to talk about Dakarai, but he reluctantly nodded his head.  “If you spend enough time with him,” he said, “he’ll start to recognize you. But I wouldn’t get your hopes up for much more than that to happen.”

Ayita nodded, and she turned the conversation back to the wintertime. “Are there any very large buildings?” she asked. “Several times bigger than the ones you just described to me?”

He gave a weak smile. “Yes, there is one.”

Ayita’s heart raced. Maybe it was the space center. “What’s inside it?” she asked.

His answer disappointed. “Nothing much. It’s just another place to sleep when it’s cold.”

The forest was silent this time as Ayita walked through it to find Dakarai.  It seemed such a longer walk without the music playing to distract her.  When she got to the clearing, she saw that Dakarai was in the lake, facing away from her.  Ayita smiled and yelled his name.  When he turned and looked at her, she added, “It’s me, Ayita.”

Dakarai
looked at her for a moment before nodding his head back and saying, “Jump in; the water’s great.”

Ayita laughed.  “I can’t!  I don’t know how to swim.”
  She walked closer.

“Oh.
” He stared at her for a while, trying to recognize her, but he couldn’t. Still, something told him that he wanted her to stay.   “That’s okay,” he said. “If you don’t know how to swim, I’ll teach you.”

“I don’t want my clothes to get wet.”

“As if they’ve never gotten wet before.  Come on.”

Ayita considered awhile before stepping closer to the lake.

“Over here,” Dakarai said, pointing.  “The drop isn’t as deep, or as sudden.”

She nodded and went to where he was pointing, staring at the water. 
The rocks below the surface were visible for about an arm’s length in front of her before the water went dark and she couldn’t see anything.  These rocks were smooth and not jagged like the ones she’d hurt her hands on.  Ayita dipped her foot into the water, then quickly pulled it out.  “The water’s so cold.”

Dakarai
smiled.  “Just hop in,” he said

Ayita sat with the water only inches i
n front of her.  The rocks were slippery, so she moved slowly and carefully. After her feet no longer felt cold in the water, her legs were no longer cold, and eventually she was sitting at the very edge of where it dropped off into a dark abyss.  She shuddered.

Dakarai
laughed at her for being so cautious. He swam closer and was treading water right beside her. “I’m right here,” he said.  “I won’t let anything happen, but if you want to learn to swim, you have to actually get into the water. You can hold on to the rock here.”

Ayita stared into the
lake.  The water encompassed her legs the way it had done twice to her whole body.  She could still see the blurred image of her hand above her as she reached up toward the surface, struggling for a breath.  “Maybe…maybe I can learn to swim some other day.  I think this is enough right now,” she said, but she didn’t move to get out of the water.

“No, no.  Get in
.  You don’t want to give up.”

“I’m not giving up! 
Just…putting it off.” 
Can’t breathe.

“Come on, Ayita.  It’s not that scary.” 
Dakarai crossed his arms over the rock she was sitting on and used it to keep himself up.  “All I’m asking you to do is to come in the water down here by me.  You don’t even have to swim, see?  Just hold onto the ledge here.”

Ayita looked to her hand.  The cuts and scrapes from clutching at the sharp rocks were
a sore reminder of how deadly this water could be.  Her fear told her to leave the water’s edge completely and never return to it, but Dakarai’s comforting stare was there telling her it was all right. 
I don’t even know him,
she thought. 
Can I really trust him? 
She could feel as vividly him pulling her unexpectedly into the water as she could feel his arm around her and swimming her to safety.  Ayita put her weight on her hands as she lifted herself and moved forward.  Her body slid into the water up to her shoulders; her reaction was to promptly pull herself back out, but Dakarai tugged on her arm a little to keep her in the water.

“Breathe.  It‘s okay…stop freaking out, Ayita.”

“I used to daydream about being able to swim,” she said in a rushed voice. She held tightly to the rock.

“Yeah?
  So why are you afraid, now?”

She shot him a glare, but didn’t say anything.  Ayita took in a long breath
and reminded herself that he probably didn’t know who she was.  She crossed her arms over the ledge the way Dakarai had, keeping herself up more with her elbows and forearms than with her hands.  “Now what is there to swimming?” she said.  “You didn’t look like you were doing much.”

“Well you don’t have to do much, if you don’t want to.  That wasn’t really swimming, though.  I was only treading water.”

“Okay, well it looked easy enough.”

“It’s really just kicking, and a little arm movement now and then.”

“I’ve tried the kicking thing.  It didn’t seem to work.”

“All right, well let me see it.”

Ayita started to kick her legs as fast as she could, and though it relieved the strain on her arms a little, it mostly just tired her.

“Whoa, whoa, slow down.  You don’t need to kick that fast.  This is just to keep your head above the water, not to circle the lake five times.”

Ayita slowed her flutter kick, which was even less productive.  “Not working, Dakarai.”

“Kick wider,” he said.  “And not just back and forth, try kicking in circles.  But you have to alternate them or you’ll end up clicking your heels and kicking yourself.”

Ayita sighed.  “Okay.”  She looked down at her legs while trying to coordinate them and rotate them correctly.  Her ankles smacked together a few times.

“I said alternating.  Try closing your eyes, and just concentrate on what you have to do.”

“Close my eyes! Are you kidding?”

“Trust me, Ayita.”

Trust you. 
She took a deep breath.  “Okay.”  She closed her eyes and thought about how her legs had to coordinate; she slowly moved her legs the way he’d described.  Slow, alternating circles.  Her legs fell into a routine and she was able to move them a little faster. As she did this, Dakarai brought his hand over and pulled hers from the ledge.  Her body sunk a little and her eyes shot open in panic, but she wasn’t sinking any further!  She kept her legs moving and her body stayed in place.  Ayita took a quick breath before exclaiming, “I’m doing it!  I’m actually swimming!”

Dakarai
smirked; inside he was laughing at her but in a friendly way.  “Well, not quite, but you’ll get there.”

“Hey, this is swimming
, whether you think so or not. For me, this is swimming.”

Dakarai
let go of her hand.  “Now just move your arms slowly out in front of you, going in and out from your front to your side.  Slowly.”  Ayita did this and she found that her balance was better and she could kick even less while still keeping her head above the water.  Pretty soon, though, she got tired and climbed out; she walked over to where the sun was warming the grass and sat down.  She looked down at her clothes, the same ones she was wearing when she left home a few days ago, and made a mental note to ask Panya how she could get something else to wear.

Dakarai
sat beside her and asked, suppressing his laughter, “How did you go all these years and never learn to swim?”

Ayita frowned and her shoulders dropped. 
She knew he would forget but hoped he would remember. She recapped everything for him, watching his face for any sign of recognition, but when she was done, he only looked disappointed.  “I thought you were someone I knew longer than that,” he said.  Ayita looked down and plucked up a piece of grass, rubbing it back and forth until it turned her fingers green. She didn’t know how to ease his disappointment or how to cope with her own. Still, she thought, there had to be a solution. When Ayita left the forest a few hours later, she determined that one day he
would
remember her.

Ayita found Panya among a group of other women sitting in a circle, and she joined them. There were three small children playing in the center of the circle, and the women were talking. Ayita tried to follow their conversation, but it seemed to her that though they spoke many words, they didn’t say very much. Ayita silently observed and wondered what it would be like to forget all the details of her life.
I suppose I wouldn’t have anything to talk about either
, she thought. Panya was included in the conversation, though she didn’t make any grand efforts to include Ayita.