Nightingale n-1

by David Farland

  "What about the heat?" Bron said. "I heard that it gets up to 120 down there?"

  "They have this thing called 'air conditioning' at the school," Mr. Bell said dryly.

  The man was trying to put Bron at ease, but the truth was that the idea of going to a new area, to this special school, unnerved Bron, despite its attractions.

  Bron desperately wanted to spend more time working on his art. But it all sounded too ... fortuitous. Bron had learned young that good luck never lasts. You can never let your hopes get too high. Something was bound to go wrong.

  "What if I don't like it?" he wondered.

  "There's two girls for every boy in that school," Mr. Bell said, as if offering a tempting dish, "and every one of them wants to be an actress or a supermodel. What's not to like?"

  "How long do I have to think about it?" he asked. He figured that he'd be a couple of weeks in a group home down south before all of the paperwork was done. There would be phone calls with his potential foster parents, then maybe a personal "meet-and-greet."

  Mr. Bell gave him a sideways smile as they rounded a bend. "Where do you think we're going now?"

  "Today?" Bron asked.

  "School starts on Monday. Mrs. Hernandez, Olivia, thought it would be best to get you settled in."

  Bron didn't know how to respond. He'd seldom just been dumped into a new family. He usually had at least one meeting first, sometimes three or four.

  So he merely stared out the window, aware that he might never come back to this place again.

  Bron gazed off into fields of golden grass and golden flowers, and fought the urge to jump out of the car.

  New city. New school. New family. He hadn't had even an hour to get ready for this.

  I don't have to bail out here on the highway, he told himself. If I don't like the school, I'm old enough so that I could walk away from it—and the Hernandez's.

  No one would ever miss me. No one would bother to come looking.

  Chapter 2

  Finding the Fledgling

  "Some sing to drive away the darkness. Others sing to beckon it. I always imagined that I sang at night because I felt at one with it."

  — Bron Jones

  A message came over the intercom, "Olivia Hernandez, your son is here." Olivia glanced up from the computer at her desk, peeved at the administrative secretary. She hadn't wanted anyone to know that she might be hosting a foster child. Now every teacher in the high school would find some reason to visit the office in the next five minutes.

  Today was supposed to be a prep day, but Olivia didn't have anything to prepare for. She had her curriculum planned for the fall, had studied the upcoming plays, and she knew all of the returning students and had read the bios of the incoming freshmen. Still, bios sometimes revealed more about prejudices and phobias of teachers and school administrators than they actually did about the students. You had to read between the lines.

  That's what she was doing as she studied the case files for Bron Jones. She didn't like what she saw.

  Bron had been abandoned at less than a week, and had been given into the care of a young couple. But Child Welfare Services had removed him at the age of two and a half. His foster mother, they'd found, refused to touch him, often put him on a dog leash, and had been keeping him sedated during much of the day in an effort to avoid contact.

  Children who suffer touch deprivation at an early age, Olivia knew, tended to withdraw,

  grow cold, and become prone to sociopathy.

  His next foster parents, though, loved him dearly, and had asked to adopt. But the State of Utah, in its wisdom, did not want to encourage a child to bond to foster parents when the biological parents might return to stake a claim. Though his mother had abandoned him, a memo at the time showed that someone in the state hierarchy was worried that a father might still appear—and so Bron had been moved again.

  Olivia didn't believe that this had been done maliciously, only that the administrator had made a terribly bad call. Similar policies had been the norm for state adoption agencies throughout the 6o's, 70's and 8o's. The administrator's memo showed that her attitudes were unfortunate holdouts from an unenlightened age.

  Strike two for Bron.

  A third family kept him only for a few months before rejecting him, claiming that he was "strange" and "possibly schizophrenic." A battery of tests showed that Bron was only a normal five-year-old who was retreating into a dream world to escape reality.

  He stayed with his next family until he was eight, at which time his father apparently committed suicide after a fight with the mother.

  The next family had complained of a child who was distant, "spooky." He'd gone through an EMO phase, dressing in black and secretly piercing body parts, before he was eventually sent to the Stillman's, where initial letters referred to him as a "good hard worker" and a "lone wolf."

  That combination of descriptions terrified Olivia.

  Bron had gone through a string of terrible bad luck when it came to foster care.

  Here was a broken child, someone who needed to be fixed.

  Olivia took one last look at the distant, poorly focused image of what her husband Mike was calling her "mail-order" son, and then turned off her computer monitor.

  She felt ready for school; she just hoped that she was ready for Bron. Mike hadn't even wanted to come meet the boy, but Olivia knew that Bron needed them both. She couldn't turn this one away.

  So she hurried down the familiar beige halls, past the tastefully decorated atrium. She halted outside the office door, smoothed her tan skirt, and listened as Allison, the administrative secretary, recited the school's praises. "You're just going to love this school," she told Bron. "You know we won an award for Charter School of the Year, last year? And Olivia is everyone's favorite teacher. All of the students adore her—"

  Olivia felt embarrassed by that word, adore. Yet it was probably close to the right word. There would be 274 students at the school, and Olivia believed that each one was important. Puberty was perhaps the roughest time that any of them would have in life. They suffered through raging hormones, love affairs, manic episodes, teen pregnancies, drug addiction. Olivia helped kids "grow through" their problems. She believed in them, she loved them, and in return most of them would respect and care for her the rest of their lives.

  Olivia spotted Bron standing taller than the social worker, Mr. Bell. Bron instantly made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. Though she'd only seen five other people like her in her entire life, she recognized him as one: he was a masaak.

  She felt bewildered. The fuzzy photograph hadn't let her see him well enough. She realized now that his long hair hid the odd boxlike shape of his skull.

  He was taller than she'd imagined, or perhaps a thick head of wavy hair made him seem taller than five-eleven. His hair was the same shade as hers, when she didn't bleach it blonde. He was broad-shouldered, with an impressively wide chest. His skin was supernaturally smooth, almost luminous, and he had a strong chin, pronounced brows, and a face that was perfectly symmetrical.

  Olivia found her heart pounding. He looked more than human. She was all but certain.

  He spotted her through the glass, and Olivia stopped. She held up her left hand, fingers splayed wide, as if to say "Hello!" then counted to three.

  Among the masaaks it was called a "display," and was a way of identifying one's species.

  Bron just smiled weakly in return, like a naive human.

  Am I wrong? Olivia wondered, doubt twisting her stomach. Is he one of us, or one of them?

  She strode up to him, feeling unsure how to treat him—as a new student, as a stranger, as a masaak... or as a son?

  She decided that there shouldn't be any difference.

  Mr. Bell was muttering pleasantries when Olivia reached out to shake Bron's hand. As she grasped it, she folded her left hand over the top of his, so that she held his hand with both of hers. It was also an old sales trick: by touching a person in a way
that was both modest yet familiar, it helped build trust quickly. If this boy had been deprived of touch all of his life, she'd need to break down his walls.

  Allison sat behind her desk, staring at Bron through thick glasses, smiling as if at a shared joke. He was handsome, her smile said. If he'd been a puppy, he'd have been a keeper.

  Bron finished shaking, and tried to pull away, but Olivia took his hand more firmly.

  It was big-boned, and she felt roughness along the ridge of his palms, calluses that could only come from hard labor—digging in a garden or mowing lawns. She touched the inside of his fingertips, pressed into them firmly, and found some harder lumps, ones that were more interesting.

  She turned his palms up to get a better look. The thick skin on his fingertips was as hard as pebbles. "You play the guitar?" She studied his calluses, looking for something elusive.

  "A little," Bron admitted.

  "Not enough," Olivia said. She flipped her own hand up for him to see. Her calluses were heavier, more rigid. He peered at them in surprise. "I teach musical theater," she said, "but I also teach guitar. We're starting classes in it this year."

  Bron opened his mouth a fraction in surprise. She suspected that he was beginning to understand just how perfect she might be as his foster mother, but if her guess was right, even he didn't have a clue how perfect they might be together.

  "I want to thank you for agreeing to meet with Bron," Mr. Bell said. "He's one of my favorite kids, and I know that this could be a great opportunity."

  Bron smiled weakly, like a patient preparing for heart surgery. Olivia flashed a reassuring smile.

  She needed to be sure of this boy. She reached up and tilted Bron's chin high, appraised him. It was an eccentric thing to do, but she'd had acting teachers study her this same way in college.

  Yes, she could see the slightly enlarged brain cavity in the anterior, with the pronounced bulge, creating a "box-like skull." His skin color had an olive cast, with a bronzed look that made his ancestry hard to classify. Mediterranean, one might guess, with a hint of Arab blood? Olivia sometimes saw humans who could pass as masaak, but this boy....

  When guaging an actor's look, most directors looked for opportunities to praise their features so that the actor wouldn't feel defensive. She asked the secretary, "What do you think, Allison? He's got nice thick lips. A lot of girls will want to play Juliet to his Romeo. The hair and chin gives him a Greco-Roman look. I can't decide which features I like better."

  His nose was a bit hawkish. With his distinctive chin, he looked like he might someday become a banking magnate or a politician. Or a movie star.

  "Where do you think your people come from?" Olivia asked.

  Bron shrugged. "I've never met my parents."

  He tried to sound bored, as if he had no interest.

  Olivia knew that masaak mothers sometimes abandoned their children, much as a cuckoo will abandon its eggs in another's nest. It was called brood parasitism. They'd leave their children for humans to raise, hoping that the children would learn to mimic human behavior, pass themselves off as humans. From ancient times, such children had been called "nightingales."

  Olivia couldn't imagine a loving mother doing such a thing.

  By now, Olivia suspected, Bron's beginning to sense that he's different from others-stronger, more cunning, more dangerous.

  She asked, "Do you like to act at all?" She was an acting teacher, after all, specializing in musicals. So it was a natural question.

  "I've never tried," he said shyly.

  Olivia had him. "We all act, Bron," she said. "We're all playing roles, all of the time. Do me a favor. Imagine for a moment that you are a king. How would you stand?" Bron had been hunched over just a bit, trying to hide the fear that he must have felt at making this introduction.

  Now he straightened his back, thrust out his chest, raised his chin. He still seemed nervous, but it was an improvement.

  "Very good," she said. "Now imagine that you're not just a king by birth, but by nature. You're not a conquering hero—you're a kindly lord, one who seeks to rule with benevolence and wisdom."

  Bron dropped his chin by a quarter of an inch, and the sparkle left his eyes. His irises widened just a fraction, and his entire expression softened. He transformed from a reluctant warrior to... something else, a wise and noble man, with just a hint of mirth.

  The change was so complete that Olivia was taken aback. "Well," she smiled. "You do know how to take direction!" From a director, that was a huge compliment.

  She had known of course that children who came from troubled backgrounds often had to learn to act. They learned to lie, to conceal their emotions. For them it wasn't just play, it was a survival skill. Bron had suffered more than a child should.

  She felt more entangled by the minute. Bron wasn't just an abandoned and abused child, he was one of her own kind. Every mothering instinct in her was screaming. She wanted to pull him in, to gather him, as a hen gathereth her chicks, she quoted.

  She continued peering into his eyes. "Now, Bron, you look like a king. You look as if you were born to rule here in this school. So here's a trick I want you to learn, for your own benefit: when you come to school on Monday, none of the students will know who or what you are. This is your chance to start over, to make an impression. So I want you to try something: I want you to hold the stance that you have now. I want you to act as if you were the king here, the rightful ruler, and I want you to carry yourself that way for the first three days. Stay in character!"

  Bron dropped his chin a little, raised an eyebrow. "You want me to act like I'm the king of the school?"

  "Something like that. You won't believe how much it will help. Long ago, there was once a playwright in Spain who worked as a political advisor. The king was a corrupt and wicked old man. So one day a merchant came to the playwright and asked for ideas on how to make himself look as if he were the rightful king—not because he wanted to be king, but because he loved his country. The playwright told the merchant, 'If you want to be a king, first act the part of the king. In time, the people will see you as such and grant your desire.' So the merchant acted the part, and eventually overthrew the king. The merchant's rule was long and prosperous."

  "What if I don't want to be a king?" Bron asked.

  "Well," Olivia said. "I suppose you could be the class jester, if you like, or you could play the part of a glum loser who doesn't have a future, or perhaps the dreamer—but if you do, you'll just be part of the crowd."

  Bron looked thoughtful, bit his lip.

  There was something worrisome about nightingales, Olivia remembered. She'd talked with her mother about them when she was very young. "None of the Aels would abandon a child like that," her mother had said, holding Olivia on her knee. "If you see a nightingale, you can be sure that it was left by a Draghoul."

  Olivia tried to still her breathing. Was Bron a Draghoul, one of the Aels' ancient enemies? Could this be a trap?

  She didn't doubt that he was born of the Draghoul, but being born to an enemy does not make one an enemy. Nor did she believe that this was likely a trap. Bron didn't have the superior smirk of a Draghoul, the dangerous swagger, the hungry gleam in his eye. He was all innocence and nerves.

  He's just a nightingale, she thought. It's an accident that brought him to me, a fortunate accident.

  She'd learned later in life that even the Aels sometimes had abandoned their children. In the old days, when they were burned as witches, the Aels had often hidden their young among humans, as a way to protect them.

  As she had expected, a couple of teachers had found excuses to wander to the principal's office. As they came in behind, she was forced to crowd.

  "Let's go down to my room," she suggested to Bron and Mr. Bell, thinking furiously. "I'll give you a tour."

  She brushed past the other teachers without making introductions. There wasn't much to see on their school tour at this time of the year, just empty classrooms. Olivia pointed out th
e bulletin board where auditions for various clubs would be listed, while other boards would be filled with art projects. There were a lot of posters for plays, rooms for dance rehearsals, and the school featured four separate theaters.

  At the center was the school's atrium. Its high windows let light shine in as if through crystal, accenting the southwestern art that graced the walls. It looked tasteful, and expensive. They strolled downstairs to Olivia's office, just off the stage area of the Hafen Theater. As they walked, Mr. Bell offered comforting assurances about Bron, as if to close the sale.

  When they reached Olivia's office, she went to her computer. With a click of the mouse she opened a file. It showed a picture of a sculpture that Bron had made in white clay, a "self-portrait."

  "You sculpted this?" she asked.

  Bron nodded. He'd obviously spent weeks on the piece. It showed a human face from the front, flawless and serene: Bron, as he would have appeared at fifteen, eyes closed, lips pursed.

  "You look like a Greek god in that sculpture," Olivia said. "You perfected your features." He'd also made himself look more human, creating a smoother skull.

  "Thanks," Bron said. "So Mr. Bell sent you that one?"

  She nodded. "What do you call the piece?"

  "It was called 'Becoming.'"

  She grinned at the double-entendre. His face in the sculpture was indeed 'becoming.' She scrolled her pictures to a side image of the bust. In it, one could see that Bron's head had something grotesque coming out the back, an oily alien with long tentacles that had appeared to be hair from the front. She scrolled to the complete back, and one could see another face—that of a strange squid-like creature, cruel and malicious.

  "Is this how you see yourself?" she asked.

  "Sometimes," Bron admitted.

  Mr. Bell shifted on his feet, looking as if he was afraid that Olivia would send Bron packing.

  Olivia sighed. No, she definitely couldn't turn this one away. Not with his tremendous potential. Not when she didn't even know what gifts he had yet.