Tide of Shadows and Other Stories (6 page)

They broke me.

I am no longer in the white room, but I am in
a
room. There on a small bed—quilt emblazoned with a dozen unicorns—is a small stuffed lion. Sebastian. I’d received Sebastian from my grandfather on the day I was born. I didn’t remember that, of course, but my mother had told me. I miss my mother. I don't remember how she looked anymore—just that she loved to smile.

Sebastian looks lonely. He’s right where I left him, nestled amongst the fluffy pillows on my bed where I always put him before I leave for school each morning. The rest of my room is just as I remember it as well. A small data terminal built into my desk, a green light pulsing in the top corner. I must have homework due. Overdue now. Flowered wallpaper—the pattern my mother picked when we first moved from Istanbul to this new town. This new planet. I barely remember the room I'd had before that. I don't think it had flowers.

I leave my room and wander through the rest of the house. It smells of my father—the rich leathery scent of his cigars and the perfume, redolent of cotton and flowers, which he keeps because it reminds him of mother. The walls of the hallway are lined with bookshelves, dusty old things. My father is a collector. On the kitchen table sit a steaming bowl of porridge mixed with blueberries, and a cup of black coffee. He must not be far away.

Outside, the sun shines down, warm and smiling. A stream babbles, and my mother's old flower garden, grown beautifully wild, ripples and dances in the breeze. I once asked my father why he never tended the garden. "That is what your mother was like in life, my darling,” he told me. “Free and boundless. Her spirit now cares for those flowers."

Willard, my father's big wolfhound, is nowhere to be seen.

The windows of my home are dimmed to keep the house cool, and my reflection in their dark surface shocks me. The wings on my back are no longer clunky metal but luxurious feathers. White as fresh-fallen snow, they look as an angel's wings. I spread them wide—twelve feet at least from tip to tip. Spreading them feels wondrous, like the muscles have been cramped and bound for my entire life. I flap them once and the gusting wind sends my mother's flower garden into a frantic shudder.

Then I fly—like I was a bird born to it, not a little girl with newly found wings.

Far and wide I fly, all across the land. I leave my house, Father, Willard, and Sebastian behind, all forgotten in my excitement.

I circle the world in minutes. Or is it years? Time has no meaning as my angel wings flap. I see many wonders from above: far to the south, glaciers crash into the sea, and waves crash in all directions for miles and miles; I cross endless grasslands and forests seeming to blanket half the world… but I do not see a single living thing. Not a bear hunting for salmon in a stream, nor a gazelle prancing through the long savannah grass; no whales break the roiling surface of the ocean; and the enormous cities, endlessly scarring the beautiful earth, are empty.

Eventually, though, I hear voices raised in argument.

Far from any city, I stumble upon a volcano. Lava oozes from the crown of his head as he argues with the sun, who hangs far above in her heavenly perch.

Far distant, the moon watches. His face is wrinkled and his eyes are wise and sad.

"She will never be replaced!" says the sun.

The volcano spews ash and more red lava leaks from its cracks and seams, like hot tears rolling down his devastated face.

"Sarah is gone," says the sun. "Forever, John. She’s dead." Kindness and cold callousness mix in the sun's voice. Suspended above all, she will never understand the volcano's misery; she can never know the scorching pain of the magma that fills his craggy core.

The volcano spits an enormous gout of ash and flame, showering the land with its fury. The sun and moon are hidden behind the dark cloud.

I flee on my wings of down toward the kind-faced moon. Higher and higher I fly, my wings tireless—away from the sun and the angry volcano, back to the land of the waking.

The next time I woke, I was allowed to leave my room. Walking at the woman’s side, I caught my first glimpse of the outside world through the dimmed force-windows that lined one wall of the hallway. White buildings reached toward the heavens; cars zipped around through a crowded sky. The woman stopped at a door—it looked no different from the sliding door to my prison, or the others that lined the wall opposite the force-windows. She pressed her palm on a sensor next to the door and it opened with a relieved hiss as the slightly pressurized air inside the building escaped into the outside world. On the other side of the door was a walled garden—utterly alien to the rest of the compound’s technological utopia. This garden was alive—lush, organic; the compound was sterile—scientific…human.

We sat together, enjoying the cool touch of the breeze on our skin.

"They make me look so ugly," I told the woman. In truth, however, I found them kind of pretty—elegant and powerful. I stuck out my lower lip and attempted to make it quiver. I tried to mine thoughts of my dead mother, the empty house I'd seen in my dream, but even those aching memories could not draw enough emotion to bring real tears to my eyes. I'm not sure I fooled her.

"Ugly?" said the woman. “John would never want you to feel ugly." Kind words, but the look in her eyes spoke to their dishonesty. "He wants…"

She paused. I waited for her words.

"He just wants…" But that was it. She finished her sentence with a small sigh. "He wants you to be beautiful," she finally said. "To be happy."

I admired the wings. I saw other children in the compound, even here in the gardens, but none had any sort of alterations or metal limbs. They were normal children, leading normal lives and living in normal bodies. I never felt normal, not inside or the outside. These wings proved to me that I wasn’t meant to be normal. The wings reminded me of my mother, of her freedom and grace. My father often spoke of her spirit, of the beauty of her soul, of her laugh and the way she could make the world seem so right even when everything was going wrong. I think my mother would have liked my wings.

I don't know why I told the woman the wings made me look ugly. It was what she wanted to hear, I think. She was not my mother.

I tired quickly after that. The woman carried me back to my room. The man with the glasses was waiting for us, but he left alongside the woman after I was settled.

I explored the intricacies of the wings, hoping to find their secret. He no longer put me to sleep with his drugs, and the clouds were gone from my thoughts. The powered-down wallscreen was almost perfectly reflective and I used it to investigate the parts of the wings that I could not see otherwise. My skin was still raw where the metal joined my body, but it seemed to be healing without infection. The man was a delicate surgeon, and already in some places, metal met skin in a way that was startlingly natural.

That’s how I discovered the keyhole—plain to the eye, inviting to my young curiosity and begging to be unlocked. But with what key?

In the days that followed, I was given lean to wander the compound. Sometimes I was even allowed out without a chaperone. I spent much of that time in that garden, listening to the gurgle of the stream and the
chirrup
ing of the small birds that lived in the trees. I wasn't sure whether the birds were real or just more mechanical artifice, until one day I saw a sparrow drinking from a small pool. I allowed myself a small, private smile. They were my friends and I envied them their freedom.

The “compound,” as I'd come to think of it (a friendlier word than “prison”), was actually a research campus, the woman told me. A place of learning, where scientists lived with their families, where the secrets of life were broken open and laid bare. She named it Tao Hua Yuan, the Peach Blossom Spring.

The soft bitterness in her eyes was new.

I saw many families on my wanderings, though they never came close enough that I could speak with them. Fathers and mothers steered their children away; scientists in long white coats, datapads forgotten, stared before detouring through less-traveled parts of the garden. In their stares I saw curiosity and disgust, pity and wariness. One day, the kind woman came and spoke sharply with two men who watched me from another bench. I couldn’t hear her words, but soon the two men shuffled off, sullen and speaking in furious whispers between themselves. The kind woman came over and sat down beside me. She tried to put an arm around my shoulders but my broken metal wings made it awkward, so instead she took one of my hands in hers and rested it in her lap. She didn't say anything, just sat with me, listening to the singing stream.

I woke screaming. The walls of my small room were choking, the weight of my imprisonment closing in—collapsing like a paper box under a heavy boot. The air was stifling and the thin blanket was tangled around my feet. I tried to kick it away, to scramble from its grasp, but every kick and squirm only ensnared me further.

The door to the room hissed open, light chasing back the shadows. The man—John—entered in a hurry. He had on no shirt, nor glasses, just a pair of small shorts. He crossed the room in three strides, chasing back the demons that haunted the shadows. He crouched over my bed and took me in his arms.

"Hush, my angel," he said.

My screaming turned to whimpers, then subsided. The gentle stroke of his thumb on my forehead was soothing, the warmth of his hand on the back of my head firm.

"Quiet, my sweet. Hush, my angel. It's all right."

My body sagged into his, all the tension gone. The walls of my prison retreated, back to their familiar white, washed with the light from the hall. The man hugged me to his chest. I could hear the quick beat of his heart.