Surrogate (22 page)

     Reaching out, he grasped her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.  "I don't believe that."  He tried to meet her eyes, but she was dodging him, at least until he slipped his finger beneath her chin and slowly lifted it so their eyes locked.  "You are many things, Shoshan, but you could never be ordinary."

     For a few seconds, time seemed to stop.  Nothing existed but the two of them, and the only sound Robbie heard was the muffled gallop of his heart, racing ever onward.

     Shoshan finally gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod before taking a couple of small steps back.  A glow dusted her form and started slowly enough, but it grew with each second.  Brighter and brighter.  Robbie flinched at the light, and he put his hand in front of his face to shield himself from its brilliance.

     "This is what I am," Shoshan said, and Robbie slowly lowered his hand so he could take in all her radiance.  She was long and tall.  Her body seemed to flow like light itself, and even though he could make out a human-like form, it seemed shrouded by the glow, almost as though its extremities were on fire, and its inner core were only a framework.

     Shoshan's face was elongated, with twin milky pools for eyes that seemed too large.  Her mouth was small, its lips pinched shut.  That was when Robbie realized her last words hadn't been spoken aloud; they had been in his head.  Shoshan was linked to his mind.

     No, Shoshan didn't appear even remotely familiar, but even so, she was beautiful, light personified--and Robbie felt himself drawn to her despite the sudden, inexplicable feeling of sadness that washed over him.

     As he stared into the light, he thought, Carrie really was gone. He inhaled sharply.

     "She's not gone. You just haven't looked deeply enough back beyond the light."

     "I don't understand," Robbie murmured. And then he thought back to the little girl at the park. "Why didn't you just heal Carrie, Shoshan? You had the ability. I saw you save that child."

     Shoshan reached for his hand, but he refused to take it as a single dark coal in the pit of his stomach suddenly caught fire. He hadn't realized that anger had been simmering within, but now he felt it, and it threatened to grow until it consumed him.

     "I did not understand your bodies before I met Carrie. It is through her I learned what was right and how your systems worked. Without her, I would not have been able to save that child."

     So there it was. He'd lost his wife, but now Shoshan could save others, not that it mattered to him anymore. Carrie was gone. He'd lost the one person who’d mattered most, and he felt he might go mad with the pain coursing through him, a mighty river no damn would be capable of stopping.

     "Look at me, Robbie," Shoshan commanded.

     Robbie didn't want to, so he clenched his eyes shut.

     "There is much more you need to see." Shoshan's voice filled his head and her hand gently took his.  Part of him wanted to stay in the darkness. It felt safer there, and he could conjure past moments with Carrie, yet some part of him  knew that no matter how diligently he might choose to hide from what he’d lost, it would find him in the end, and for everything Shoshan had tried to do, she deserved his attention.

     Taking a deep breath, Robbie eased open his eyes, grimacing as the harsh brilliance overwhelms him once again. It was like the rest of the world had ceased to exist in contrast to her Majesty beauty.

     Robbie's eyes watered, and he tried to clear the haze.  Yet each time he looked at Shoshan, she was staring back.  He was the only being in existence. The rest of the world didn't seem to matter.

     As Robbie brushed the tears from his face, part of him wondered whether it hadn’t just been the brilliance that had made his eyes overflow but instead the emotions swirling dangerously within him, threatening to surface yet again. He had no defenses against the pain – – none- - and it claimed him completely.

     "I can't see anything new," he whispered, wanting to close his eyes.

     "Then look with your heart instead of your head," she whispered. "What you seek is there, waiting for you."

     His heart? All it could focus on was Carrie. Didn't Shoshan even know that?

     "Of course I do," she replied into his thoughts. "Now look closer."

     Robbie blinked a couple of times to clear his vision before he really willed himself to find whatever it was Shoshan felt he needed to see. Although he doubted the importance of it, Shoshan was far too adamant. She wasn't just going give up, so he might as well humor her.

     All he saw was the light, but soon things slowly started to shift. He expected to find some sort of skeletal frame, maybe not composed of bones, but something else, something just as strong, when he discovered what was combined with that framework.  He gasped.

     Carrie. Her body seemed fused in the brilliance, almost as though the two would become one.

    
I'm seeing things
, he thought, blinking rapidly a few times.
It's what I want to see. My mind is causing this.

     Yet Carrie’s image remained in the center of the burning, and when he looked down at Shoshan's hand, she was now the ghostly apparition of Carrie's.

     "I don't understand," he whispered, his voice breaking.

     "I didn't know what would happen when I took Carrie's body into mine.  I knew only that I could save the baby.  Now Carrie is a part of me.  Sometimes I forget where I end and she begins."

     In that instant, as Robbie stared through Shoshan to the faint glimmer of his wife, he recognized that the alien wasn't really using a disguise to make people think she was Carrie;   no, she was actually hiding herself and letting Carrie show through.  When he made this connection, he felt his chest tighten.  He knew that Shoshan was telling the truth.  Carrie was still there.

     He looked into Carrie's eyes.  Her mouth curved into a soft smile, and her eyes were fixed ahead in a dreamy stare; perhaps she saw things Robbie couldn't imagine, and for all the stillness within her, she seemed at peace, something he wished he could find in her absence.

     "She loved you," Shoshan affirmed.  "You have no idea just how much."

     As Robbie could manage no words, he nodded to indicate he'd heard her and let her lead him from the darkness back to the house.  They'd almost made it to the porch when a shooting star zipped across the sky, leaving a dusty trail in the blackness, almost as though the heavens were made of chilly, dark water.

     Normally, people made wishes on such things, but Robbie didn't bother. The one thing he wanted more than any other was for Carrie to be alive again, not that she ever would.  As such, this was the best he could hope for.

     As they walked, the glow from Shoshan's natural form slowly faded until, by the time they'd returned to the bedroom, all that remained was Carrie’s outer appearance, the disguise that kept Shoshan safe in a world far from her own.

     She eased herself onto the mattress, one hand touching her swelled abdomen, the other reaching for him.  Her eyes were large and luminous in the moonlight, and her nostrils flared with each breath.  Her long hair looked a dark gold as it spilled over the front of her nightgown.

     Taking a deep breath, Robbie sat down on the mattress.  He automatically chose his side, and he drew his body close to Shoshan’s as she lay on her side with his body echoing her position.  Closing his eyes, he rested his head next to hers, so close its strawberry scent completely filled him.  A few of the strands tickled his nose until he smoothed them away.

     "What's it like for you?" he asked softly, drawing an arm around her.  Shoshan's hand quickly found his and set it atop her belly so he could feel the child kick.

     "What do you mean?"

     He scooted closer to her.  "Our forms are so different.  What does it feel like to carry them inside of you?"

     "Noisy."

     Robbie frowned.  "What do you mean?"

     "It's like I'm filled with thoughts that aren't mine, yet our existence has become one of co-dependence, as though the thoughts all come from me."

     Intrigued, Robbie lifted himself to one elbow.  "You mean you can tell what the baby's thinking?"

     She nodded.  "Sort of, though I really wouldn't consider them thoughts--just blurs of color and sensation."

     Inasmuch as he tried to imagine such things, he couldn't.  "And where does Carrie fit into all this?" He tried to keep his voice even, but even he could hear the pain in it.  "If she's dead, how can she contribute to the noise?"

     Shoshan frowned and studied his face, reading his thoughts.  "Perhaps you think it's quiet because you only hear what is spoken, but the words she never uttered didn't die with her, just like the little girl on the swing."

     Robbie felt Shoshan staring at him as he grappled with that possibility.  Could it be that everything Carrie had felt even at her death was still out there on some frequency so that  someone like Shoshan could hear?

     Shoshan nodded.  "Yes, Robbie--that's how I know how much she loved you." She watched his expression carefully, her own just as thoughtful.  "The one thing I didn't expect was that her feelings would overflow into me so deeply, I could become so human so soon just by being her surrogate."

     Her fingers stroked his face, and his hand caught hers as he tried to sort through all the feelings rushing through him.

     "Shoshan--"

     She lightly touched her finger to his lips, silencing him.  "Please--just let me say this before it's too late and I lose my courage." Her eyes glowed with tears that suddenly pooled there.  "Before I came to your world, I never knew humans existed.  I'd hoped you did.  I even dreamed about it.  But the one thing I didn't dream was falling in love with you.  My people don't feel such things, and I never would have felt this had it not been for Carrie."

     Robbie flinched and stood.  "You need to stop now--for both of us."

     Shoshan, too, eased from the bed, and stumbled to her feet, uneven with the emotions burning through her as she watched him walk to the window, slowly turning his back to her, shutting her out.

     "I know you're afraid Carrie's gone, but she won't be, not so long as I exist and you keep her memory alive."

     His shoulders stiffened, and she stopped inches from him, her hands reaching out slowly, fingers trembling.  For a few seconds, her hands stayed there in midair, as if she didn't quite know what else to do with them, but then, as she exhaled softly, step took the last step, closing the distance that separated them, and gently wrapped her arms around his torso while laying her head against the smooth warmth of his back between his shoulder blades.

Chapter Fifteen

     Shoshan lay with him, waiting until he’d fallen fast asleep before she detangled her body from his and slowly rose from the bed.  She’d been so tired lately, considering just how much of strain it had been maintaining both her disguise and the welfare of the child within.  But the nights were too beautiful to stay cooped up inside these walls.

     She padded over to the window and looked out at the landscape below.  That’s when she saw them—the little spots of light that flittered around.  There were so many of them, and she found herself mesmerized, thinking of her natural form.  For that reason alone, she felt a kinship with the small beacons of brilliance, and they quickly lured her down the stairs and out into the open night.

     She savored the feel of grass on her feel, a sensation Carrie had loved.  So many impulses from Carrie, and she was starting to wonder which of those belonged to the mortal she’d felt die within her and which were her own from experiencing this world so filled with wonder and beauty.

     She smiled as the wind gently tousled her hair, and once she found herself where the lights seemed thickest, she eased herself onto the ground and tucked her legs up under her as best she could with such a mound of a belly.  Then she held her hands out, palms up, in front of her, waiting to see if the magic would touch her.

     To begin with, it was just one little creature which landed, the small globe of light burning against the night, but the longer she sat there, as still as possible, the more of the insects landed on her.  It was only then that she realized, some of the brilliance she tried so hard to hide was showing through.  Whether it was that they, too, sensed a sort of kinship within her, she couldn’t tell.  She couldn’t read their tiny minds.  It was enough that she found so many spots of light collecting on her.  And she laughed, amazed once again by the beauty she’d never thought she would find.

     “What are you?” A strange voice asked from behind her.

     As Shoshan turned, all the life forms which had collected in her hands, her hair, her skin, all lifted and swirled away.  She focused, trying to hide the glow so that only the form that Carrie had would show through, but she didn’t know what the stranger saw.

     “I don’t understand.”  Shoshan slowly got to her feet and tilted her head to the side, trying to understand the sudden burst of emotions that filled her as he came closer.  She squinted and realized she knew him.  He was the one who’d first found her.