Kate nodded, her blond hair hanging loose over her narrow face. “No problem, Archer’s got this one, right buddy?” She patted the horse and smiled.
I felt my competitive side take over, and I narrowed my eyes in concentration. “Ready?” I called.
Our eyes met. “Go!” we shouted together.
I spurred Nightingale forward, and we took off. I kept my eyes on the thick mass of Kate’s hair, willing Nightingale to inch past it. Below me, the clay-packed ground rushed by in a blur of brown and red.
I could already see our usual marker approaching up ahead; we always stopped at the same cropping of rocks. Underneath me, I felt Nightingale muscles contracting, pushing us forward, but Kate stayed a half a pace ahead as we barreled across our invisible finish line. Kate was enthusiastic about her victory. I tried not to grumble; I hate losing.
“Yes! That’s my boy, Archer!” Kate patted his mane, and crooned at the brown spotted horse.
“You had a head start,” I mumbled.
Kate laughed, and despite the loss, I felt my mood lighten. Running always did that for me. We turned the horses, walking back side by side.
“What did you do this weekend?” she asked.
Instantly on alert, I searched her face for the reason behind her question but saw only innocent curiosity. “Some home improvement stuff with Peter,” I answered, carefully.
Kate looked at me in mock sympathy, and I knew she believed me. “Did you ask him about the town homecoming next Saturday?” she asked.
“Yeah, he said its fine as long as I’m home by eleven.” I didn’t really care about homecoming or the parade, but Kate did, so I tried to sound excited.
“Home by eleven? You’re going to miss the end of the parade. Well, at least he’s actually letting you go.” Then her expression changed. Now she was the one to look nervous “Hey, um, Ethan Lawson asked about you the other day.”
“That’s nice,” I answered, already dismissing what was obviously a match making attempt on her part. I stared out over the valley, and then focused my eyes on aspot at the top of the cliffs, where blue sky met orange clay peaks. I was reminded again how much I loved the colors here, even if green grass was scarce.
“Alina, he’s cute and he’s nice and he likes you,” Kate was saying.
I suppressed a sigh. I’d noticed how she’d emphasized the word ‘likes’; as if that was reason enough to like him back. None of the boys here interested me, and the few that might have been attractive were still off limits, for reasons I couldn’t share with Kate. At times like this, I really hated having a secret. “Sorry, Kate, I’m not interested. Why don’t you ask him?” I added, hoping to throw the spotlight off myself.
Kate gave me a look. “He obviously has a thing for dark hair, dark eyes. I don’t think blonde fits into that category.”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Peter would flip.”
“Peter’s going to have to deal with it, eventually. You’re not a little kid anymore. You’ll be a senior in a couple weeks.”
I smiled in spite of my frustration. “You sound like you’re writing the speech for my teenaged rebellion.”
She grinned. “Feel free to use it if needed.” Then she grew serious. “Look, I know you’re not that social, but you’re going to have to learn to trust people eventually.”
I shifted in my saddle and wished, for the millionth time, that I could just tell her. But if I did, Peter really would flip. Not to mention the danger it would put her in if they ever found me. My mind filled with blurry images of black monsters, and I shuddered. All I knew of them were stories, passed down through Peter’s memory. He hadn’t told me much- just enough to give me a healthy dose of fear and understanding for why we continued to live in hiding. I blinked to clear away the dark images. “Yeah, I’ll think about it,” I said.
∞
Back at the barn, Kate and I put away the saddles and wiped down both horses. When she was gone, I opened the mental line of communication between me and Nightingale.
I wish I could just tell her who I am, I thought. I knew I was whining but I didn’t care.
You know the danger that would put her in, Nightingale replied.
Yeah, but I wouldn’t have to tell her everything at once. What if I started with the fact that we can hear each other’s thoughts andgive her a chance to get used to that before I tell her I’m from another planet?”
You forgot to mention the internal lamp you carry around inside, she reminded me. How do you think she would take that?
I sighed. She had a point. The truth about me was a lot to process. Especially for a human who had no knowledge of the thousands of other inhabited planets that existed far outside this solar system. Kate was right. Trust was hard for me.
∞
I said good night to Nightingale and let myself in the front door, kicking my boots off haphazardly. The scent of garlic and tomatoes hit me. I smiled, relieved all over again that Peter had discovered his love for cooking. I could still remember the human’s prepackaged and microwaveable meals I’d eaten when we had first come to Earth. This was much better; still, a surprising hobby for the Emperor’s top advisor, his previous job.
Peter was taking a pasta dish out of the oven, an oven mitt on each hand. Though the scorching Arizona sun did nothing to raise our body temperature, which ran at a steady 120 Fahrenheit, a four hundred degree oven would definitely do some damage.
“Did you have a good ride with Kate?” Peter asked, setting the dish on the table.
“Yeah, she and Archer beat us.” I sat down and began dishing salad into a bowl as Peter joined me.
He chuckled. “I hope you weren’t a bad sport about it.”
“No, I didn’t have time. She started talking about the homecoming parade next week.”
“I’d forgotten about that. You know you need to be careful.” Peter’s expression changed, and I could feel the lecture coming on. These were the times Peter felt more like my dad than my guardian.
I rolled my eyes. “I know, I know. Don’t let anyone touch my skin and don’t use my glow. You don’t have to keep reminding me.”
I’d spent half my childhood practicing these things. By seventeen, I’d gotten pretty good at it, even Peter had to admit. We hadn’t had to move in over a year and a half now - a new record. And I’d made a friend because of it. Kate was the first friend I’ve ever really had; the first Peter allowed me to have. It had taken a lot of convincing for him to believe I could be friends with Kate and not tell her what we were. Then he’d met Kate and that made it easier. Kate was easy to like. Her eternally cheerful attitude was hard to resist.
And it turned out I liked Arizona. The orange and red clay of the cliffs that made up the canyon we lived in almost glowed in the sunsets. Sometimes I felt like it reminded me of something, though I couldn’t quite remember what.
Either way, I didn’t need Peter lecturing me. I’d be careful because I didn’t want to have to leave.
CHAPTER 2: P.E.
The next morning, I awoke to the sound of the front door banging closed. I could hear Peter moving around downstairs. I was pretty sure he’d shut the door loud enough for me to hear on purpose. I never understood the point or the draw to being up with the sun, and since he did, he didn’t stay patient very long when I tried to sleep in. I showered quickly, threw on a pair of jeans and a black tank top, and headed downstairs. I found Peter at the kitchen table, bent over a notebook, a piece of toast in his hand. He had his riding boots on.
“Out riding already?” I mumbled, heading straight for the coffee pot. I poured a cup and gulped it, black. I would forever be grateful to the humans for their coffee. Peter said the closest thing back home was black tea. How did they survive without coffee?
“It’s hot in the barn. I let Archer and Nightingale out to run around while we do our lessons,” Peter explained. He closed the notebook and turned in his chair. “We’re doing P.E. this morning.”
“I can’t wait,”
I said, between sips.
Peter ignored the sarcasm in my voice. Something only a true morning person could do. “I’ll meet you out back in twenty minutes.” He finished up his toast and headed down the hall to his study.
“Okay,” I mumbled, already pouring a refill.
Three days a week we did P.E.; physical education in the most literal sense. Peter spent the entire morning educating me on the extra things our bodies could do, compared to humans. According to him, back home I would’ve discovered and developed these abilities on my own; like learning to walk or talk. But here, not being able to see others around me constantly using the same abilities, I had to learn carefully. I had to learn to, not only master the use of my extra abilities, but control them enough to hide them when I needed to. I had gotten pretty good at it all, but Peter was too regimented to let me ‘graduate’ from daily practice.
Peter was already standing by the access doors in the backyard, waiting for me, when I walked out. Next to him on the ground lay a set of double wooden doors that opened upwards, like a storm shelter. Peter opened them and we headed down the set of narrow stairs that led to our underground training room. The way down was pitch black for a split second, as I closed the heavy wooden doors behind me. Just as quickly as the blackness had closed in, it was light again. The light projected around me from the inside out, casting a beam in all directions, all the way down the stairs. A similar light came from Peter’s chest.
At the bottom of the stairwell our only path was a sharp left turn. From there the narrow space opened into a single hollow room. We were about thirty feet underground now with thick cement walls sealing us in on all sides. My internal lamp lit the entire space, even without Peter’s light helping. It wasn’t a blindingly bright light, even in a small space like this one, and it wasn’t yellow or dim like a bulb or flashlight would be. It was white, a natural light source, and it was evenly dispersed in the space around me, without shadows or flickering. This was one of my ‘extras’; one of the things that made me obviously NOT human.
Peter crossed the room and walked to the narrow table that sat against the far wall. He set down the books he’d brought with him, including a journal he used for noting my progress or what I should work on more often.
“What are we doing today?” I asked, my lack of enthusiasm obvious in my tone.
“Light control. But with a new twist.”
I looked at him, a little confused. My light source was pretty straightforward, as far as I knew. It was something that I could turn on and off when I wanted to. It was easy to control, and it was just sort of ‘there’; a convenience for seeing in the dark but not much else to know. I wasn’t sure what else I could learn about it. “What do you want me to do?”
“Do you understand what our light source is for us, Alina? Do you know why it’s important?”
Peter was asking the question so seriously; I took a moment to make sure the answer that was so obvious to me was the right one. “Yes,” I said, drawing out the word. “It’s important because it’s connected to our heat. These two things make up our ‘glow’. Our glow is our life source.”
“Right.” He nodded. “And for most of us our glow is seen and felt as simply a physical light, the source that gives us our feeling of energies. But there have been some in our history whose glow was more than that. It was powerful enough to give them other abilities, as well. Abilities that set them apart, even from others of our kind.”
“What kind of abilities?”
“Well, for example, your ability to communicate with Nightingale.”
I thought about that. I knew Peter couldn’t do it, but I hadn’t realized it was anything special. I’d always assumed there were others who could do it, back home.
He continued, “And there have been other glows that held other abilities.”
“Like what?”
“Most are domestic talents. Building things, caring for animals, politics.”
I snorted. No surprise there - living on Earth this many years had taught me politics was definitely a ‘special ability’.
Peter’s lips twitched in amusement before he went on. “But some have also shown more powerful talents such as super strength, speed, and more rarely, the ability to see things that others can’t. Or, see things that haven’t happened yet.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Like seeing the future?”
He nodded.
“Wow, that’s kind of big. Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” I couldn't help the fact that my tone held a tiny amount of accusation; I thought I knew everything about our kind. Peter had always been honest with me about my heritage and the world we came from. At least, I thought he had. I’d believed him without question, too, since all of my own memories of Gliese were gone.
Peter said my memories had been erased for my protection, in case the shadows ever found us. Sometimes, I wondered if it was just the last act of a protective mother.
“I didn’t have a reason to tell you before,” he admitted. “I’m not sure we’ll ever meet anyone like us again, much less anyone who can do any of those things.” A small amount of pain flashed in his eyes as he spoke. Both of us wondered if we would spend the rest of our lives wandering Earth, cut off from everyone else like us. We rarely spoke of it. I could tell it bothered him.
“So why are you telling me now?” I asked.
“Well.” Peter cleared his throat. “As you know, your birthday is coming up in a couple of months, and you’ll be eighteen,” he said, meaningfully.
I nodded. Eighteen was the age our kind ‘matured’. In other words, we stopped aging, or slowed dramatically; it would take me another fifty years before I looked nineteen. I knew about the process from Peter’s stories but I’d been ignoring it because I was afraid Peter was going to make us move again when that happened. Still, I didn’t understand what my birthday had to do with Peter’s history lesson.
“This is around the time our people would discover these types of abilities, at maturity,” Peter explained.
“Oh…” I still didn’t understand where this was going.
“And I was thinking it might be hereditary.” He paused and then added, “Your mother had extra abilities.” He spoke quietly, but his words rang in my ears as if he had shouted.
“Oh,” I repeated, unable to say anything more. I knew so little about my parents that anything new always felt important. And this seemed pretty big. I gathered my thoughts and looked back at Peter, who seemed to be studying me and waiting for me to get it together. “What could she do?”
“She could speak to animals, like you.”
“What kind of animals?”
“Well, the species would’ve been different on Gliese, but all of them, as far as I know.”
That got my attention. So far, I’d only ever heard Nightingale. I’d tried with Archer and with various other animals I’d happened upon: birds, cats, dogs – but nothing. I filed it away as something to think about later and looked back at Peter. “What else?”
“Her speed. She could run extraordinarily fast. No one could beat her.”
Okay, that was definitely not me. I’d tried going out for track and field last year, along with several other sports. A way to be more human, Peter had said. Needless to say, I hadn’t made any of the teams.
“As I said, it usually doesn’t show itself as an ability until the age of maturity,” Peter added, probably reading the skepticism in my expression.
It was hard for me to believe there was some great dormant power inside me, waiting for the right moment to emerge, but one look at Peter’s face said arguing wouldn’t get me anywhere. He clearly wasn’t done. “Anything else?”
“Only one that I know of.” Peter paused, his brows knitting together like he was trying to choose the right words. “I heard her speak of it only once. She had the ability to feel certain …energies that others could not. Energies that came from other’s glow sources, allowing her glow to shine brighter than others did.”
I tried to picture what he described, but the image of my mother was fuzzy, at best. With no memories of before, the only pictures I could conjure were based on my own fantasies – of what my mind thought she might look like, according to the way Peter described her.
Then Peter was talking again. “And she could strengthen or weaken those other energies with her own.”
“Like make other people’s glow stronger or something?”
“I believe so.”
“And this last ability is one you want me to try,” I said, realizing his intentions now.
“Only if you want to.”
I thought about it. Obviously, Peter assumed there was something inside me that would make me capable of doing the things my mother had. The problem was I didn’t feel anything going on inside that made me agree. Then again, it beat normal practice, which at this point had grown pretty boring, and even though Peter had left it up to me, I knew there was only one right answer here. “Okay, what should I do?”
“First, you have to focus,” Peter began, taking turns watching me and glancing at his notes. “Clear your mind and concentrate. This will probably be something you will have to work on for a while before you’ll get it. Now, concentrate on your light. See if you can make it any brighter than it already is.”
I kept my eyes closed and tried to clear my mind. I stood very still and thought about nothing but my glow light. A moment passed, and the skin surrounding my glow began to tingle. I opened my eyes and looked down at my chest, to the spot the light shone from. My light shimmered around the room as it grew brighter through my shirt; brighter than it had ever been before. I let it hang there, until I could feel it sort of shimmering against my skin. Then I turned and looked over at Peter, in awe. I couldn’t believe it had been that easy.
“Good,” he said, nodding enthusiastically. “Keep pushing; try to make it even brighter.”
“How?” I felt like I was already giving it everything I had; I wasn’t even sure how much longer I could hold onto the progress I’d already made.
Cold Blood Page 37
