by Giger, S. L.
Phe looked at him aghast. “Because these words come from Dr. Palmer and his likes,” she stuttered, obviously upset that Sam could be on his side. I furrowed my brows in confusion.
“Um, sorry, but why is it so bad to support Dr. Palmer?” I asked sheepishly.
“Haven’t you seen the commercial?” Phe raised an eyebrow.
“I always skip them.” I shrugged apologetically.
Phe lowered her voice an octave and quoted: “Science and medicine will be our best weapon against the unknown. Help us fight the Alternatives.” She scrutinized me to see whether her words rang a bell.
“Should this be something I should know about?” I said through gritted teeth.
“Wow, they don’t teach you anything useful in high school,” Joe remarked. I suppressed a chuckle because, after all, I hadn’t even been attending school.
“So, what does he mean by this?” I looked at them.
“Dr. Palmer thinks that people who believe in alternative medicine and live in harmony with nature have cursed the people who don’t live like them,” Phe explained. “He states it as if these people, the Alternatives, have the power to kill everybody who doesn’t lead a life like them. Which is insane. But even worse is that some people follow his words blindly.” She glared at Sam.
“I’m not following that crap,” he said to defend himself. “But I do believe that a virus needs to be fought with strong medicine. An antidote which the doctors first have to develop.”
“Okay, no need to yell at each other.” I held up my hands. “I’m sure we all want the same thing in the end and that is to stay healthy.”
“Yeah, I’m telling you one thing,” Phe said. “If the virus arrives here, I will move to Australia. They are so far away from everything, they will probably be fine this time as well. You’d just have to come with me.” She turned to Joe.
He pulled a face. “I like it here. To get me to move, there’d have to be many warning signs of the end of life as we know it here. Plus, it wouldn’t be like a romantic getaway. And I’m sure if it goes that far, you wouldn’t be the only one who has the idea of emigrating.”
“Yeah, well let’s hope they find a cure soon,” she sulked.
“Are you already crossing off the days until you come to college?” Sam changed the subject and I was glad to switch to a topic where I could contribute a little more.
“I really am,” I laughed.
“Next time we see each other, you need to visit us,” he said.
“Yes, you can stay over at my dorm,” Phe said. “And I can take you to the galleries. There are some amazing pieces of modern art.”
“Sounds good,” I replied.
Next, we discussed what would be the most suitable branch of studies for me. At some point, it was time for them to go home and have dinner with their families, who they also hadn’t seen a lot of lately. Since Alex was up in Greenfield with his sister, I had no reason to go home right away. So, I finally paid my neighbor Rey a visit. I had also neglected him quite a lot during the past weeks. I used to swing by his glass-blower shed regularly after school or during vacations.
I knocked at the door of the shed and then entered. He’d most likely be in here and not in the empty house, which reminded him of the absence of his wife.
He was walking toward the door but when he saw that it was me, he returned to the workbench and picked up a towel and a piece of glass. Maybe my eyes were playing a trick on me, but he looked older than I remembered. Due to his physical job, his upper body was well built for his fifty-nine years. However, now the wrinkles below his eyes looked deeper and darker. I wondered whether he’d be bald or almost grey if he hadn’t shaved his head.
“Nathalie, I wondered how you were doing,” Rey greeted me. “The last time I saw you, you were somewhat beside yourself.”
He was referring to the day when he spotted me after I had run once around the globe. I had been devastated when I'd found out that Alex had turned me into a project and assumed that he had never actually loved me. Good that it had turned out to be a big misunderstanding.
“Everything is well again. How about you? Working as usual, I see.”
“Yes, I must work or what else would I do with myself? It’s like therapy.” He chuckled without smiling.
“How is your wife? Have you visited her lately?” She was bi-polar but that alone hadn’t been the problem. A bad reaction to a medical shot meant that since then she had suffered from memory loss.
He shook his head, his lips a thin line. “There is no connection between us anymore. It’s very seldom that she recognizes my face and it gives her too much pain to not be able to pin down who I am. Thus, I stay away,” he sighed.
“Oh no.” I walked toward him with hanging shoulders, sitting down on the bench I had claimed as my spot a few steps away from him. “I’m sorry.”
He took a breath. “It is what it is.”
“So, all you do is work here and read?” My heart felt heavy and I tried to hide my sadness by starring at the tips of my hair to see if I had any split ends. Of course, I had perfectly frozen cells. Therefore, my hair looked like in a commercial for conditioner. I should have visited Rey more often.
“It’s okay. Perhaps the night flu will soon arrive in the US and how I spend my days will be the last thing to worry about.”
“Don’t say such a thing!” I exclaimed. “We will be all right.”
“For your sake, I hope that we will.” He glanced at me and absentmindedly polished the piece of blue glass. “Do you want to help me with something?” he asked.
“Sure. What?” I pushed myself off the bench and jumped to my feet.
“International sales have been very bad lately. People don’t want to have things shipped anymore because the packages might contain the virus.”
“What?” I gasped. “It can’t be that bad.”
“It is,” he said earnestly. “People are scared. I guess I have to go back to a more old-fashioned method.” He wrinkled his nose.
“Which means?” I asked.
“I created a flyer. Maybe you could give them to people you know.” He awkwardly shuffled some dirt into a pile on his workbench.
“Of course. I can even drop some off in Boston when I visit my boyfriend,” I offered.
Rey disappeared to get the flyers and handed a pile to me. They showed beautiful glass creations, which were formed into special flower vases or chandeliers. At the bottom, you could read Rey’s name and contact address to discuss price and shipping.
“They look nice,” I said and packed them into my purse.
“I have to try to get some customers this way, or otherwise I don’t know where to put all the glass.” One corner of his mouth dropped down.
“I’ll gladly take a few pieces. They are all beautiful.” I tried to cheer him up.
I parted with the promise to spread the flyers and couldn’t stop myself from dropping a few off in our mailbox on Cape Cod. After all, Melissa worked at a hospital. Big institutions, which had a fund for the arts, were exactly the customers Rey needed. However, I couldn’t bring myself to leave them a note and hoped that she would spread the flyers anyway. The rest of the pile I carried to Boston, where I pinned them to info boards at several universities. A normal human would have needed a whole day to do that but once again, my Siren speed made moving from campus to campus peanuts. I swooshed past groups of people and slowed down in deserted corridors, so that nobody would get a shock because I suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
Chapter 4
Up to the meeting with my friends and the conversation with Rey, I'd been getting on fine by ignoring any mentions of the night flu. However, the day after I had talked to them, two people died of the night flu in Mexico. Suddenly, the flu was the main topic in every American news report, and it created big headlines in all the newspapers.
Some of the headers made me shake my head. ‘Human Sickness or Supernatural Curse,’ was one of the titles which I read to Alex. �
��After the mysterious death of two adults in Ensenada, the question of the nature of the night flu gets more prominent. Neither of them had been abroad lately, nor was there a trace of the virus anywhere in their apartment. Despite that, their short but intense sickness had exactly the same development as the other night flu cases. The victims both complained about having trouble breathing. Soon, a fever burned them from the inside, leaving a red hue on their dead skin.” I questioningly looked at Alex.
“That does sound a bit odd. I’ve heard of people turning yellow, green, or white, but to die with a red face when your organs fail? I’d have to check up on that. Read on, please,” Alex said.
“The doctors at Ensenada general hospital are clueless as to how the victims could have caught the virus. Therefore, the Mexican people are finding their own answer. "Dr. Palmer" has been the most googled term after "night flu." Already, the man’s claims, that the night flu is a curse by witches and magicians, is appealing to the masses. Consequently, a mob of scared citizens brutally slaughtered a Mexican family living a quiet life outside Maneadero. As a reason, the attackers described the family’s seclusion and preference for only eating the food they grew around their house. Is this a start of a second era of witch hunts?” The article ended there, and I could only stare at the last words in bewilderment.
“Uh oh, people killing people because of a flu can’t be good,” I said.
Alex took the newspaper from me with a serious look. “After the first events in Turkey, citizens robbed drugstores to get more medicine,” he said, “while in Eastern Europe, the same thing happened, along with a few deaths during armed street fights. For months, Dr. Palmer had been laughed at but suddenly, more and more people seem to believe his claims. This shift toward attacking people whom they call Alternatives is quite alarming. How can people be so naïve and just solve a problem by saying that it’s a magical curse?”
“Right? They don’t even know that a magical world exists,” I exclaimed. “It’s all a guessing game. The witch hunts had been an embarrassing disaster for humans, so how could they go down that path again?” I searched his eyes to find affirmation that this was completely insane. Surely, they would find a remedy soon and all this talk of evil magic would be forgotten.
To my dismay, Alex didn’t radiate any confidence. “Could it be a curse?” he asked, his eyes oscillating in his head.
“No!” I said decisively. “Nobody would use magic for bad things, and above all, not in a way that cast a poor light on magic.”
“You are right, that wouldn’t make sense,” Alex said pensively. “What other magical creatures are out there, though?” His eyes interlocked with mine.
I lowered my gaze to the ground and slowly shook my head. “I have no idea. They never told me. I wish I had asked. But I had to concentrate on not attacking anybody. I missed my family, and then I had to protect our secret during everyday school life. Therefore, it just never occurred to me that there had to be other creatures than Sirens. But now that you say it, I’d find it rather odd if Sirens were the only supernatural beings.”
“Wow, so find out soon!” Alex urged me with an excited glimmer in his eyes.
“How? Crawl back to Melissa and ask her? No, thank you.”
“You could at least call and ask,” he said, hopeful. “It’s still a rather odd and powerful virus. You can only imagine how crazy people will go here, once the first cases appear in the US.”
“I’ll see what I can find out,” I muttered. “Switzerland still seems to be quiet.” I turned the focus back on the outbreaks. To be sure, I started the laptop and googled the night flu in Switzerland. The top headlines said that the government hadn’t announced any known cases yet, though there had been several deaths in Germany and Italy.
“With people dying of it so close to the border of Switzerland, it’s kind of a miracle that Switzerland has been spared so far,” I said to Alex.
“That’s the thing. Nobody has figured out how the virus is spread. If there was a trace, the medical workers would know how to contain the virus. Everything they are doing at the moment are only precautions.”
Apparently, the US had been affected by the side effect of the night flu—the fear of the Alternatives—worse than I had expected. That’s why I received a phone call from Melissa a couple of days later. So far, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to call her and it gave me a sense of satisfaction that she was the first one to call.
“Nathalie?” I heard her voice.
“Yes. What’s up?” I tried to say indifferently, although I was curious to hear what she had to say.
She took a deep breath. “You need to go to school.” Her voice was strained.
I was slightly taken aback. I had been absent for two weeks and nobody had said anything. “Why the urge now?” I asked. “Has the principal called?” I rolled my eyes. I could move to a completely different country if I wanted, so why should I still go to school here?
“Yes, their office has called several times.” There was a short silence. “Unfortunately, I told them that you had a virus. Apparently, that’s like a crime now, with the night flu,” she said, cringing.
“Why, what did they say?” I asked, a bit shocked that my not going to school seemed to have consequences for Melissa and Luke. My heart would have been pumping wildly out of nervousness while waiting for her answer, but of course, my heart was frozen, and I stayed completely composed.
“Not say, do. People threw hate letters onto our lawn. They didn’t even make the effort to put them into the mailbox,” she said with a shaky voice. “We have been living here for twelve years. Of course, we aren’t close friends with the people in town, but nevertheless, it’s our home.”
I took the phone from my ear and pressed it to my forehead. I hadn’t meant to cause trouble for them. “What did they write?” I said back into the phone.
“That we should take a ship and move away. That we shouldn’t spread our germs in the city. Their tone of voice sounded as if we were the scum of the earth.”
I felt sorry when I heard the sadness in her voice. “I will go to school tomorrow. I hope it will get better then.” I swallowed. I also hoped that I wouldn’t get lynched by the other kids. There was nobody who would have my back.
“Good. You can always stop by at our house as well,” she said.
“I did. I left some of Rey’s flyers.” I avoided making a promise I wouldn’t keep.
“Ah, those were from you?”
“Yes, he needs new buyers. I thought you could hang them up at the hospital.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks.” We were both quiet for a few seconds. “I have a question,” I said. “Are there other supernatural beings apart from us?”
I heard Melissa chuckle. “Yes, there is anything you can imagine. But each race keeps rather separate.”
“Why have you never told me?” I exclaimed. “Like what? Magicians, witches, daemons?”
“Yes, probably all of that. I can’t be sure myself either. Magical races don’t communicate with each other. It’s difficult enough for us to keep our existence a secret. It would make it even more dangerous if a bigger amount of supernatural activity was located in one place.”
“So, despite belonging to a secret world, we aren’t even allowed to see everything?” I asked, slightly disappointed.
“Every three years there is the Dance of Scheherazade. All magical creatures are invited to that, but we all go in disguise. That’s the closest you can get to the other races.”
“That sounds amazing! When is the next dance and where is it?” Nothing in the world would stop me from going there if I knew where it was.
“The last one took place shortly before you were created in the jungle of Malaysia. They are always at other locations and we receive a puddle beforehand. In two years, you have the next chance.”
“This dance is authorized by the Orbiters?” I could hardly imagine that they’d send out invitations for it.
“Yes, it is,” she confirmed.
“And you never had contact with any other race?” This time I didn’t want to leave with only half the truth.
“No. I respect our keeping a distance from each other.”
“Hmm, well, wow,” I stammered. “I hope I will meet more magical beings anyway. I’m sure some of them are also curious.”
Good luck finding them with all the secrecy. Now it’s even more important that we are careful,” she said with her overprotective-mother-voice.
I sighed into the phone. “So, I’ll go to school tomorrow.” I became aware of the awkwardness of speaking to Melissa on the phone. I could have been at their house in ten minutes but if I thought about facing her directly, I felt hurt and anger rise in me again.
“Good,” she sighed. “Was nice talking to you.” She also realized that our talk had come to an end.
“Say hi to Luke,” I managed to say and hung up. A spasm went through my body. Oh boy, how exhausting it was to feel sorry for someone I wanted to hate. And now I had to go back to school and would basically be entering the lion’s den.
Chapter 5
On my way to Orleans High School, I thought about how convenient it would be if there was an actual school for Sirens. A place where we could train our powers and spend time with equals. Where I would be among other new Sirens who had no clue about the broad world of magic and its possibilities. A school where I wouldn’t have to pretend to be someone else. But probably there weren't enough young Sirens in the world to fill up schools. That's why, sadly, I had to go back to a normal human high school. Mingling with the students without drawing too much attention toward myself might be even more difficult, now that people were starting to get so scared of quiet people.
Like when I had newly arrived at this school, I could feel people’s stares on my back when I walked toward the building.
“Nathalie, how nice of you to grace us with your presence,” Mr. Parrot, my economics and history teacher remarked when I took my place at my table. He was usually quite a pleasant teacher, and maybe I was imagining it, but it seemed as if he purposely stayed a couple of yards back from me.
