by Indie Gantz
I was tired. Of course I slept. I do not say this. I have been told that pointing out what should be obvious is rude. Ask a question instead.
Open Mind: Avias.
Did you sleep?
Close mind.
His facial muscles are slack. There is an absence of red eyes. His eyelids are weighted. Breath slightly sour. He slept.
“Yes, some,” Avias replies. His eyes try to engage mine. Be polite. I hold eye contact for five not entirely unpleasant seconds, and then avert them to the window.
Brown. Nothing of substance to focus on. Desert. The road is black concrete with cracks and holes. The car swerves smoothly to avoid the most offending fissures. Car movement much too practiced for Charlie to be driving. Oleander.
Oleander’s eyes are on the road, heavy and blinking excessively. Fatigued. Driving for an extended period of time. Kor is beside him in the passenger seat, awake and reading a book. I can’t make out the words, they’re too far away, but the balance of probabilities would suggest the words to be useful for our mission.
Charlie is beside me, head resting awkwardly on the window. Asleep. Her neck will be sore when she wakes up. I ponder waking or repositioning her, but waking her up would disturb her sleep cycle, perhaps make it difficult for her to fall back asleep. Her inevitable sour mood stops me. I do not wake her.
Open mind: Avias.
Oleander needs a break.
Close Mind.
Avias turns his attention to Oleander. His eyes search his friends face. Avias’ head nods once. He agrees with my assessment. “Ollie, I’ll take over. You should sleep.”
Sharp pressure in my lower abdomen. Full bladder. I need to urinate.
“Yeah, okay,” Oleander replies. He nods as he yawns. “Thanks, mate.”
Oleander pulls the car over and I follow Avias out of the car.
My intention must be obvious. No one stops me when I walk several meters away from the car to gain privacy. My sister would say several šēpusi away, but the Anunnaki measurement system is terribly archaic. The metric system is far more logical.
There are heavy footsteps behind me. Male. Could be Oleander, definitely not Avias. The footsteps stop three meters behind me and approximately one meter to my left. Then, there is a gentle scrape of dirt under steel-plated boots. Trepidation. Another second, then the unmistakable sound of liquid hitting dirt from a distance. Steady, strong, lasting approximately twenty-one seconds. A nervous voice that has yet to become familiar.
“Sittin’ in a car this long, my legs feel like butter.”
I affix the fly of my pants, and then angle my body to acknowledge Calor, while still providing him privacy.
“Yes. It is confining,” I say aloud. Irritating. It still sounds foreign. I do not like the sound of my external voice.
“This thing we’re doing-” Calor stops talking and thinks on his next words longer than necessary. “I need you to know that I’m not going to let anything happen to Avias. No matter what happens.”
I don’t know how to respond. I know that he doesn’t mean he wouldn’t let anything at all happen to Avias, because that would be impossible. Avias exists in a world that will require action and reaction from him. Breathing, digesting, brain function, hormone production, smiling, seeing, existing. Many things will happen to Avias. Calor must mean something more specific. Within the context of our present circumstances, the Fotián must mean he won’t let anything negative happen to Avias. On this, I can agree.
“Neither will I,” I reply less than a second after his comment.
When he turns towards me, Calor’s eyes divert to the ground, and his hands push into the pockets of his denim. His face actively tries to hide something. It’s futile. The boy’s transparency rivals that of glass.
“You have your priorities and I have mine. Charlie is your sister, she’s always going to come first.”
I nod instantly. “Yes, she will.”
“Right,” Calor replies, taking a calculated step forward. “And I’m saying that Avias is my first priority. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep him safe. You understand that?”
I narrow my eyes at the young man and try to decipher the motivation behind his statement. We will all do what we can to keep each other safe, but Calor has taken it upon himself to specifically point out his devotion to Avias’ safety in particular. I can conclude that he cares deeply for Avias and yet, they only bicker, and show no outward signs of affection. Interesting. Interesting? Yes, interesting.
Emotions are complex and absolute. They are interwoven into every behavior and motivation. They are inevitable, they are incredibly powerful for some, but they are not especially interesting. Too many people experience emotions for them to be at all thought provoking.
However, I find this exchange compelling.
“You are not friends,” I finally say. The statement is a fact, but I find myself curious as to Calor’s response anyway.
Blood rushes to his cheeks. He looks down at the dirt, his hands turning into fists in his pockets. Embarrassment, guilt, anger.
“No. We never were.” Calor’s voice is much quieter than it was before. I can barely hear it through a light Eastern breeze. He uses the toe of his shoe to draw a small line in the sand. Typically, metaphors are lost on me, but I am cognizant enough to see the one Calor is offering me now. “You two seem... close.”
In proximity? Not at the moment. Earlier in the car- No. Calor is referencing emotional attachment. Intimacy. How very boring of him.
“He is my friend.” The statement feels odd on my tongue, but inexperience does not erase validity.
Avias is my friend. I have made a friend. I hadn’t expected to, and I didn’t mourn the potential loss of that seemingly normal piece of existence, but Charlie did. She has always wanted to make friends and experience that part of life. I, however, have never found the need or purpose for friends. I have Charlie. I had my parents. I haven’t needed anything else.
Avias, and to a lesser extent Oleander, Bo, Kor, and Vi, are unexpected additions to my life. I care for them, but Calor is right. Charlie is my priority. If we are in danger, I will always choose Charlie, and now I know that Calor will always choose Avias.
The Fotián says nothing more. He nods, a flicker of emotion on his face that passes too quickly for me to read. Calor walks back to the car and I follow behind him.
Bo is speaking quickly with her father. Oleander already snores. His deviated septum is distracting enough that I almost miss the sound coming from south of the road. Almost. My eyes follow the sound waves to their source.
A vehicle. Roughly two kilometers away, traveling towards our vehicle at a reduced speed. There is an excessive dust cloud behind it, which would suggest the vehicle only recently slowed down. The color is muted. Beige or tan. The vehicle is small, easy to miss.
Open mind: Charlie.
Charlie, someone is coming.
I can’t see my sister, she has taken Calor’s place in the rear seat of our vehicle, but I sense her immediately.
What is it? What can you see?
A vehicle. Possibly following us.
Should I-
No. Wait.
Close mind.
Charlie wants to alert the others, but there may be no need to alarm them. We are traveling on a public road, with evidence that it is used often. It is far more likely that the vehicle is slowing because its driver sees our vehicle parked on the side of the road. The driver may be preparing to stop and offer assistance. It is far less likely that the driver has knowledge that could do us harm.
The vehicle continues to move but is slowing further. A peculiar sensation travels down my spine, curving with the lumbar vertebrae and settling in my sacrum. The feeling burns as it moves, tingling and urging me to pay attention to it. Caution.
It would be best to divert the vehicle.
I sweep my eyes over the terrain and look for a way to impede its progress. Action, reaction. What is the action? A catalyst. The e
asiest solution is to do nothing, but the impact of indecision could prove disastrous.
The vehicle still moves. Less than a kilometer away.
What is the immediate problem? Not indecision, not lack of options. The vehicle. The vehicle itself is the problem. Remove the vehicle and the problem disappears. Remove the vehicle.
My thought is stifled by the scene as it morphs into something new. The dust cloud that trails behind the vehicle in the distance still rises and begins its settling process, but the source of the dust cloud is no longer visible. The vehicle has disappeared.
Day Two: Charlie
CHAPTER SIX
Truth You Can’t Run From
“Purple. Our eyes are purple?!”
My voice is shrill, but I can’t change that. My eyes just magically changed color after my mind was accosted by some sort of botanical acid trip. I’m struggling to keep it together. My father doesn’t seem interested in my oncoming hysteria, though.
“Never mind that,” John blows me off with a wave of his hand, not rudely but heavy with distraction, as his eyes dart around the jungle. “We need to keep moving.”
“Why? Is it because our eyes are now the color of irradiated eggplant?” My voice goes from shrill to aggressive, and Tirigan gives me a reproachful look. What?
There are more important things to worry about, Charlie.
I roll my eyes. I don’t actually care what color my eyes are for the sake of appearances alone, but purple eyes are nonexistent, or at least I thought they were, and now it’s even more obvious that Tirigan and I aren’t true Anunnaki. I still don’t know exactly what that would mean for us, but I know I don’t want to be found looking like this.
“No. It’s your powers,” My father answers steadily. “Now that they have been returned, you’ll have difficulty controlling them at first. At least, that’s what Calla told me would happen. The Negral tracks elemental power use between the barriers, so I need you to try and concentrate on not using your powers.”
“Yeah, well, that will be difficult considering we don’t even know how to use our powers or even what it is we can do,” I snap back. “Did you two plan for this? Did you know this would happen?”
My father doesn’t look at me. Instead, he starts walking again.
“We prepared for this, yes...” He trails off for a moment, obviously choosing his words carefully. It’s a habit I wish I practiced more, being thoughtful in what I say, but in this moment, I can’t keep quiet.
There’s so much we don’t know, so much we didn’t even know to question. Mysterious powers, losing our mother, not being full Anunnaki, the Negral…It’s all too much to process, and John taking his sweet time explaining things to us isn’t helping matters.
Finally, just before I’m about to press him harder, John gestures towards one of the bags in the wagon.
“She put everything she could in there. It’s the best we could do, under the circumstances.”
It’s a green duffel, nothing special about it, really. The handle is fraying on one side and there’s a small stain towards the bottom. There’s enough stuff in it to fill it out, but not so much as to make it bulge. Calla purposely packed it, just in case of…whatever this is. A lot of things about that rub me the wrong way.
“Wha—” I start to ask, but John stops suddenly and raises his hand sharply to silence me.
I instinctively look around for whatever it is that has my father scared. Twigs snap in the distance, and every hair in my body jolts upright. I whip my head around in the direction of the sound, and the branches that impede my vision spring back forcefully, creating a clear path to the source of the sound.
I don’t have time to react or see what made the noise before Tirigan jumps in front of me. The branches all snap back in place at once.
What just happened? I ask Tirigan. Did you just-
I didn’t do that, Charlie. You did. I can’t see his face, but I can tell Tirigan is just as confused as I am.
As my heart beats wildly from the adrenaline that was just coursing through my veins, I push against Tirigan’s back, ignoring what looks like misplaced chivalry. I keep my eyes in the direction of whatever it was Zoúnkla tried to show me. Or whatever it was I made Zoúnkla show me.
Seeing the fruits of my indigo eyes is exciting, but it’s also incredibly bewildering. It isn’t as if creating that path was my intention, I certainly didn’t mean to do it. Moving those branches was completely out of my control; it just kind of… happened. I wanted to see what made that noise and the branches just—
“What was it?” John whispers to us. “Did you see?”
An animal of some kind. Mammal. Antlers. It ran away as soon as the branches exposed it.
“He said it was an animal,” I relay Tirigan’s thoughts to John.
“Something we should worry about?” John turns to Tirigan, who narrows his brow at what was once a path to the sound.
Perhaps.
“He didn’t get a good enough look to be sure,” I interpret, averting my eyes. My cheeks are suddenly hot, and I want to hide my face.
It’s a habit I’ve had since childhood whenever I’ve wanted to avoid looking at my parents after I’d disappointed them. Anything from getting caught stealing Tirigan’s portion of fruit after dinner, to sneaking out of the trailer so I could skinny-dip in a nearby lake, would cause me to bring my hands up to my face so I could cower behind them. I hate disappointing my parents, not because of some authoritative hierarchy in our family, but because I respect them both and only want the same in return. Of course, the skinny-dipping incident ended with Calla jumping in with an impressive cannon ball, so that one doesn’t really count, I guess.
Now, after using my powers for the first time and having absolutely no control over it, my instinct is to hide. I’ve done something reckless, exposed us to the people who can track and hurt us.
I’m sure my cheeks are redder than the sun and exertion call for. I turn even further away so that John can’t see. Before I can attempt an apology, my father turns me back around to face him, his hands closing over each of my shoulders.
“Don’t hide from me, Lee Lee.” The nickname springs tears to my eyes. I force myself to meet his gaze. “You’ve used your powers, so we really need to move now, but I want you to listen to me. Are you listening?” I nod and he continues. “This is who you are.” John smiles at me, and then looks over to Tirigan. “Who both of you are.” I nod again, and John takes my face in his hands. “I may not be able to tell you exactly what will happen, or what you can do, but I want you to know that I will be proud of you no matter what. Being half Téssera, half of Calla, is a blessing, and not something to hide from.”
My brow lifts in relief as I sigh out my gratitude. “Thanks, John.”
My father nods, and then places one of his hands over his heart for Tirigan, a show of affection he uses just for my brother.
Our father accepts us as we are. He is our biggest ally and we are going to have to leave him in this jungle.
“You can’t come with us, can you?” I ask, having already figured out the answer. John shakes his head sadly.
“There are barriers to prevent that. The Téssera barrier runs along Anunnaki land and doesn’t allow their entry. There’s also an Anunnaki barrier that runs along Mitéra.”
“But Calla, she passed through the Téssera barrier and she’s not Anunnaki. We’ve always lived on-” I try to argue, but John cuts me off.
“Your mother went through the barrier when she did have Anunnaki blood inside of her,” John says with a small smile. “She was pregnant with you.”
I think about that for a moment, wondering how any of this is possible. “The Téssera barrier. Where is it?”
“The edge of Zoúnkla, we passed through it when we entered the jungle.” John answers. “The Anunnaki live in the Southern Hemisphere and the Téssera have the Northern Hemisphere. There are pockets of land between the barriers where either species can go, like the jungle, bu
t those places are riddled with legends that keep people out.”
John begins walking again, sparing one last glance around the jungle. We follow behind him eagerly. I almost trip over the wagon my father pulls behind him, concentrating only on our conversation and forgetting basic motor skills.
“Why?” I ask, after righting myself. I pretend. “Why are we separated like this?”
I can’t see his face because he continues to walk in front of us, but I can tell John has tensed at my question.
“I don’t know exactly,” he answers slowly. “Your mother and I have wondered, of course, and with our combined knowledge we came up with our theory about the barriers.” His shoulders do a defeated kind of shrug, and my mind halts abruptly as I think more about what these barriers mean for us.
“So, Tirigan and I should be able to move freely between the barriers,” I say slowly, looking down at my feet as they move across the wet ground.
“Yes,” John replies. “But that doesn’t mean you should. We can meet here occasionally, but it would be better for you if we didn’t.”
We could stay in the jungle. We could avoid integrating ourselves with the Téssera. Tirigan looks both encouraged and irritated at the same time, making me give a half-hearted chuckle.
“He wonders why we can’t just stay here, then.”
“Because not only is it not safe,” John answers, looking at Tirigan. “It’s also not the life I wish for you. I do not want you hiding away if you can help it. If it’s possible for you to find a home there, with your mother’s people, I want that for you. Being an elemental is as much a part of you as being Anunnaki is.”
A swell of gratitude rises at the very same time a pang of heartache strikes. John is right, I do need to know more about this side of myself, but I also need him. He isn’t just my father; he’s also one of my three best friends. He’s the one who takes my side in family debates and shares my love of night over day. He taught me how to take down predatory mammals safely and how to mend my clothes. He’s not perfect, but his flaws just make him all the more important, because he works through them. He never makes excuses. I don’t want to imagine a life without my father in it, just like I can’t imagine one without Calla.
