Tide of Shadows and Other Stories (7 page)

"A dream is all. Hush."

"Why is he so sad?" I asked. I felt bold that day.

The woman tried to hide her surprise behind a smile. "Would you say he’s sad?"

"His eyes say so, and the sounds around the words when he speaks.” Even when he seemed happy or excited, there was a certain melancholy underneath it all. "Is it because of Sarah?"

The woman mouthed the name, rolled it around with her tongue.

"He calls me that. Sarah. But it's not my name," I said. "Who’s Sarah?"

A small butterfly, its wings as yellow as a dandelion and just as delicate, settled on a nearby flower.

"Sarah was… My daughter's name was Sarah. She was an angel."

"Does he miss her?"

"Very much."

"Do you?"

A tear rolled down the woman's cheek. It clung to her chin for a brief moment, then fell to splash against her hands clasped in her lap.

"I do."

The butterfly flew from its perch, fluttering away into the garden.

"So do I," I said.

I was woken by the hiss of an opening door. I tried to open my eyes, but they were disabled. He had been working on me again, trying to fix my wings. He always shut off my eyes when doing so.

A gentle hand grabbed my own. It was papery and dry and reminded me of my grandmama’s. She would hold me by either side of my face and plant wet kisses on my lips.

In its palm was a small piece of paper—hard and full of tension, as though it had been folded many times. Another papery hand joined the first and folded my fingers around the paper.
Hold tight
, I knew the person was telling me.

I felt chapped lips brush against my forehead, the tickle of their whiskers light against my skin. Then the man lay my hand back at my side and walked from the room. The soft sound of silk slippers on the cold floor was the last I heard of him before the door shut. The paper was warm and damp in my sweaty hand. Knowing it must stay hidden, I slipped it into my underwear, just where the elastic waistband dug into my skin.

I fell asleep wondering what was written on that note.
 

Behind the small oak, near the crook of the stream where the sun never shines. Meet me when dusk falls and find your freedom.

I sat alone near the described spot as dusk blanketed the garden. I’d been there each day at the desired time. The man with the glasses never questioned my whereabouts as long as I was returned by the time full dark fell over the campus. Sometimes, I left my room at noon and spent my days in the garden; other times, I left near dusk. Seven days passed this way, though I never lost heart.

But that day, I was startled when the man with the glasses entered the garden. He saw me and came to sit on my bench.

"Where is she?" I asked. I’d not seen the woman since we last sat in the garden, watching the yellow butterfly and speaking of Sarah. She hadn't met me in the garden nor warded off curious scientists since. I’d not heard her voice in the darkness as the man in the glasses worked on my wings.

"She left," he said. He looked tired.

"Where?"

He laughed, a quick bark with little humour in it. "Be damned if I know."

The man took off his glasses and rubbed his bloodshot eyes with the heel of his hand. Where my father's hands had been rough and callused from hard work in our yard, this man's were soft, the fingers long and delicate. I missed my father's hands.

"Is she coming back?"

It took him a few moments to answer. "I don't know," he said. "I don't think so. I hope so."

"Why did she leave?"

This time, he didn't answer me. Together we watched the stream as the sun fled to wherever it is she goes after dark and night enveloped the garden.

"Let's go home," I said. The person who had given me the note was not coming to meet me that day, not with the man sitting next to me.

Freedom would have to wait for another day.

On the eighth day, there was a little boy waiting for me by the stream.

He had dusty blue eyes and a quiet soul. He wore nothing but a thin paper medical gown, the kind that does up in the back with a string, and his hair was all mussed up. He looked like a boy I could be friends with, in a different life.

Without a word, the boy handed me a key. Then he vanished. He didn't duck behind a tree or run around a corner; he didn't poof up into a cloud of smoke; he just disappeared. He was there, then he wasn’t. Is that any stranger, though, than having metal wings sprouting from your back? It wasn't for me to say.

So, instead of dwelling on it, I looked at the key. It was not a flat plastic card like most keys, but an archaic piece of metal, knobby on one end, with staccato teeth at the other. It was a key like the ones in
 
the old fairy tales my father read to me as a child. Tied to the knob was a brown paper tag, on which was written:

Use this when the time comes

I had no idea when the “right time” would be, but I did have a very good idea of which keyhole it belonged to.

On the ninth day, I used the key.

On closer inspection, the key was made from the same metal as my wings, and a single word carved onto the shaft between the knob and the teeth. A name, actually.

Sarah.

It was not a key to somewhere but to someone. To me.

Over the past several days, items had started to appear in my room. A delicate doll with a ghostly white face and a pretty pink dress; a quilt on my bed to replace the thin white sheet; a silk flower in a vase on the small desk. Small offerings of peace from the man with the glasses to his little angel of Tao Hua Yuan. To Sarah. No matter his effort, though, I felt no twinge of regret when I left that small room for the last time and went to the garden, key in hand.

An old man sat on a bench. He smiled at me but soon left, shuffling away with a ratty paper book in one hand—a relic even older than he was, I'd guess. Birds chirped, the stream gurgled, and the ever-present breeze sang its song accompanied by the susurrus of leaves blown idly about.

I slid the key into the wing’s small keyhole.
 

I turn it, and the wings stirred to life. Metal screeched and steam surged from the exhaust vents, jetting away from my body. Soon the wings settled into the low rumble of a well-running engine.

"Ancient technology," said the man. Memories of a dream, overheard while drugged. "But tested and proven." The woman had said nothing, but I remembered hearing the clip-clop of her shoes as she left my small room.

Whether from my dream or some trick of science, I knew how to use the wings as though I were born with them. I stretched them out eight feet on either side of me. They dwarfed me with their immensity. I launched into the air and flew—lifted towards the heaven by that ancient technology. Lifted towards freedom.

My wings weren't all-powerful as in my dream. Instead, they huffed and wheezed, pulling me skyward with beleaguered strokes. But they worked, and freedom was before me, ripe for taking. I thought of the kind woman. Where would I find her? I must find her.

The small community and its scientists and families dwindled. Soon, they were like little toys, the white buildings like dollhouses. Scattered throughout were pockets of green like the garden I’d grown to love. Glistening streams twisted through the community—so carefully laid that they looked nearly random—feeding into an enormous lake. I pushed higher, and angled toward the lake. The clouds above were enormous now, wandering across the sky, curving towards the horizon.

But there was no wind. And clouds do not curve to the horizon.

The sky shattered as I slammed into it, my body crumpling against the phantom clouds, and a spider-webbing distortion spread out from the point of impact—like the glass screen of a cracked datapad. I noticed the oddness of the sky. It didn't stretch out infinitely before me, but curved, dome-shaped, to the horizons. No clouds floated midair; instead they were flat and depthless against the surface of the dome, displayed there to hide the vastness of space beyond. How had I not noticed such trickery from the ground? Falling, I could see stars beyond the outside surface of the dome as the projected sky reassembled itself into a façade of daylight. A small island, floating in space. The digital webbing righted itself almost instantly and the clouds knitted back into perfection.