Pax

by Stella Sky

  My brother shifted and was off before my father could even finish his sentence.

  “He’s in a rush,” I said as I walked out on the veranda and watched him fly. He was flying in the direction of Cuama Reef. I did not bother mentioning this to father. Perhaps there was nothing to worry about. But I would keep an eye on the situation. I had too. If I did not occupy my mind with something, then I would think of her and I could not think of her. I had to let go. I had to let time bury any memory of her, but that was easier said than done.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MELODY REEVES

  “What do you think caused your fall, Ms. Reeves? Where do you think you fell to give you this amnesia?” the reporter asked.

  Cameras flash flashed all around me as I sat behind a table with the Santa Barbara police chief answering the questions of the media circus that had shown up there since I was found.

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember,” I said to the reporter. This was becoming my answer to almost every question, and I congratulated myself and how perfect of an excuse it was: amnesia.

  “How was Ms. Reeves found, Chief?” another reporter asked.

  “Around three in the afternoon yesterday my office got a call from the Sunshine Vineyard that Melody Reeves had wandered into their winery asking for help. She wanted to use the Draqua. We went right out to the winery as fast as we could while my department also called her father, President Reeves.”

  “And she knew who she was then?” the reporter asked.

  “Yes, she knew exactly who she was, but she did not know where she was. She thought she was still in Los Angeles. We think that after the fall she faced in Los Angeles on the Pacific Palisades Trails, she got lost on the trails. She then found a public transit or such and got on and ended up in Santa Barbara.”

  “And what triggered her memory?” the reporter asked.

  “The doctor that has reviewed Ms. Reeves says that it could be anything, such as another fall, or it could have just worn off and been a temporary amnesia,” the chief said.

  This circus went on for another twenty minutes until it was over. But that was just the news conference. There were still plenty of news vans and reporters parked outside of every building that I was at. It was exactly like a circus moving from one spot to another. I just wanted to get back to my place and take a bath and sleep for a long time. But I knew that was not in my future anytime soon. There was a lot of reports to fill out and questions to answer.

  “Air Force One is landing at the airport,” the chief told me.

  “Thank you, Chief,” I said. I took a deep breath. My father was on his way to me. This was not going to be fun. I waited in the posh hotel room that with Secret Service detail outside my door. I looked down at the crowd below, and I was glad to be up very high. I laughed, “Cylo would like to hear that,” I said to myself. I felt sad that I was thinking about him.

  “Baby! Oh, my baby girl!” my father shouted as he walked into the hotel room. He was alone while his entourage waited outside.

  “Hello, father,” I said as he gave me a big hug.

  “Jesus you gave us a scare. I will never let you out of my sight again. That is it; you are moving into the White House,” he said hugging me tightly.

  “No, no, that is not necessary. You know I don’t like politics,” I said.

  “It does not matter. You are not in a good place. At least come for a month while I know that you aren’t going to lapse into amnesia again. It can happen, you know? I have the best minds telling me this,” he said.

  “Father, I just fell and hit my head. It’s nothing to worry about. I am fine,” I said. “I can’t believe all of this media nonsense that has been going on. I wasn’t missing, I was just not remembering,” I said annoyed.

  “I am going to double your detail then,” he said.

  “Fine, as long as I don’t have to move into the White House,” I said.

  “Agreed,” he said.

  “You know, what if I ever wanted to go off the grid for a while? If I wanted to escape all this and go live in Alaska or something, do some writing. I wouldn’t be able to without a search party going out for me,” I said.

  “Well, no, that would not happen because you would tell me that you’re going off grid and I would know that you are just out there finding yourself. I would know that you are just writing and exploring, not missing,” he said.

  “Noted,” I said.

  “Come here,” he said hugging me again. We hugged, and I was happy to see him again. I had not been gone very long, but when I was gone, I thought I would never see him again. Now I was able to see him again, and it felt good. I wondered if I did stay on Kelon, would I be able to come back to Earth on a yearly basis in order to see my father? That would keep them from thinking I am missing, I thought.

  “So now. Let’s get you into a hot bath and get some food into you. Go take a bath, and I am going to order room service,” he said. I laughed at him.

  “All right, dad.

  “What do you want? Pizza, burgers, mashed potatoes?” he asked, listing all my favorite foods.

  “How about all of it?” I said, suddenly wanting to indulge. I moved into the bathroom and closed the door behind me. It was nice to have some peace. I ran the hot bath, and a flash of the bathtub in my hut on Kelon sped before my eyes. It made me sad.

  The next week after the circus had finally calmed down, I found myself back at my home in Los Angeles. My detail had doubled, but other than that, everything sort of went back to normal. People still stared at me in public, but they always had.

  I stayed home a lot, not ready to venture out and hear the whispers of people saying that I had been kidnapped or something, or lost my mind. So I stayed in, and I wrote. I wrote about my experiences, but I knew that I could never tell anyone. I was writing this for me and my memory.

  Ping!

  I looked at my Draqua. It was a text message. “We are coming to you for brunch today,” Sally’s text message said.

  I had seen Sally and Gloria once since I had been back and Gloria never stopped apologizing that she had recommended the Pacific Palisades Trail at all. She cried a lot, and I assured her it could have happened on any trail. We had a sweet reunion, but a short one: my father’s orders. But now they were coming over for brunch instead of me going to a restaurant. I still was not ready to go out in the public eye.

  I responded to the text with, “Sounds good, see you soon.”

  An hour later they were sitting around my outdoor table on my lush patio. I missed the lushness of Kelon, but I could not say anything about that.”

  “So have you decided if you are going to see him?” Sally asked.

  “He was really broken up about you being gone and all,” Gloria said.

  I broke out of my daze of imagining the tall trees of Kelon.

  “What? Who?” I asked.

  “James, duh. Your boyfriend,” Gloria said.

  “Oh, no, I don’t think I want to. He wasn’t really my boyfriend; we were just dating, and I complained about him a lot,” I said fiddling with my food on my plate.

  “Yes, you did complain about him. I would say you did the whole amnesia thing just to avoid actually breaking up with him,” Sally laughed.

  “Yeah, I would rather just avoid him. He was so damn boring, and he was just using me,” I said.

  “For sex?” Gloria asked.

  “No, to get close to my father… like all my suitors,” I said.

  “True, true, that must be very hard,” Sally said.

  Then they changed the topic to a benefit that an acquaintance was throwing. They dragged her choices for DJ and catering through the mud. It was then that I realized that I was also bored with Sally and Gloria. I was bored with all of this. I was bored with my life on Earth. There was nothing very exciting going on, and in fact, my disappearance was the most exciting thing that had happened in a long time.

  “We should do something different. I want to go to Tahiti. I thi
nk I will go to Tahiti,” I said, interrupting them.

  “Alone?” Sally asked.

  “No. You guys should come. Let’s go be wild in the jungle and skinny dip in the ocean. Well, it would be you guys and of course my ten Secret Service men watching over us,” I said to them.

  “Woohoo, I like that idea. I could use a bit of a vacation,” Gloria said.

  “Yes, count me in too,” Sally said. “Whenever you want to go, and whenever your father lets you leave,” she laughed.

  “Yeah, he is overprotective. Maybe in two weeks from now he will be more reasonable about letting me go on a vacation,” I said realizing that Sally was right and that my father would not let me go swim in the ocean at the moment. He would think I was going to have amnesia in the water and drift away. I sighed as Gloria and Sally continued their usual talk. I was bored out of my mind. This was what normal life was for me over the next two weeks. I was so bored with all of it.

  Then one day out of nowhere, James showed up at my door.

  “James, what the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

  He walked right in, and the Secret Service stopped him in his tracks. I sighed annoyed and said, “It’s fine; let him in. He will only be here a few minutes.”

  James fixed his jacket and dusted off where the Secret Service guy had touched him. “I can’t believe that you won’t see me,” he said as he walked in.

  “Well hello to you too, James,” I said, rolling my eyes as he moved past me and sat on the couch.

  “Why have you not returned my calls? I have been waiting. When you disappeared, I was the one in front of the cameras begging for your return. Do you know how it makes me look that you were my girlfriend and once you returned, we are not showing up in the news together? It makes me look like an ass,” he said.

  “You are an ass.”

  “What?” he said.

  “I said you are an ass. You are lousy in bed. You are not a gentleman at all. You are not passionate, and you are the most selfish and boring person I have ever met.”

  “How dare you speak to me like that!”

  “I did dare, and I will say it again and again if you’d like. You are lousy in bed, you are boring—”

  “Okay, okay I get it. Now just calm down let’s talk through this,” he said, suddenly becoming nicer. He held my hand and said, “I’m sorry. I apologize. I just miss you so much, Melody, that is all. I don’t know what to do with myself.”

  “No. Wrong. You don’t know what to do now that you don’t have the interest of the public eye on you anymore. It is annoying, and I don’t care. I’m done with you, James, and I can’t believe that I stayed with you for so long. Now get out.”

  “But that’s not what you really mean. I know that it is not. Melody, honey,” he said.

  “Michael! James is ready to leave now!” I shouted. My Secret Service guy appeared and grabbed James’ arm and escorted him out all the while James was saying, “Melody, honey, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. I will pay for dinner now. I will pay for all the dinners if you want!”

  I just laughed and did not listen. “Good riddance,” I said to myself. I was glad to have Secret Service for the first time in a long time. If it meant getting rid of men that I did not like, then it was worth it. I kicked back and felt good about putting James in his place. My strange, boring, normal Earth life was full of these types of little visits, and the next visit was from the President of the United States.

  “Melody, have you thought any more about living in the White House? I still want you to move in. It will be good for you,” he said.

  “Ugh, Dad, no. I already told you that I want to live here. Though I’m not even sure that is what I want,” I said.

  “Well, what is it that you do want? You are the daughter of the President of the United States. I know I don’t have a lot of time lately, but we can figure something out.”

  “Do you want to know what I really want?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “The one thing that being the daughter of the President of the United States can’t give me: privacy.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “I just want to go off and write somewhere, like I told you. That is a dream of mine. It was pretty bad before, and now after the incident, it is worse.”

  “I’m sorry, Melody. I have to admit that I have been selfish. When I started running for office, I only thought of the opportunity it would give you to go to whatever school you wanted and to do whatever you wanted. You have an advantage, but I did not think that you would be such a private person and this is the worst thing for you.”

  “I know, dad, I know. You did not know. But I just want you to know how serious I am about that privacy and I might run off to woods now and then for a couple of months. If I do, don’t freak out,” I said.

  “I understand,” he said. “So, want to order pizza and watch bad t.v.?

  “Definitely,” I said.

  That was the last of the weekly visits for a while, and I was glad to find some alone time to just chill. Then one Sunday morning I was lounging in my robe and reading a book about space. I had picked up astronomy lately because it was the only thing that made me feel close to Cylo again. I was feeling a little strange that morning as I laid on the chaise and pushed a blanket over me. I was just feeling off, and I did not know exactly what it could be, so I just took it easy.

  Ping! It was a text message from Sally that read, “Brunch and mimosas?”

  They were eager to get me back into my routine and get me out in public again. But for some reason sitting in a restaurant in Beverly Hills did not excite me. Nothing could hold a candle to the adventure that I had experienced with Cylo on Kelon and on Tiok.

  But something was different. As soon as I read the word mimosa, I felt my lunch come up. “Oh god!” I said as I ran to the bathroom. I made it just in time. I was throwing up the rest of the day.

  “What the hell is wrong with me?” I thought aloud. “Maybe it is some sort of parasite I caught from eating the fish on the alien planet of Kelon,” I said. I flushed the toilet and went back to reading. Then later I ordered pizza and was excited to eat it. This was my favorite food. I always wanted to eat it. But as soon as I opened the cardboard box and the steam and smell of cheese hit me, I gagged. I ran to the kitchen sink and hurled again. Jesus, I must be really sick. Pizza was my favorite food, and it never made me sick. The only time a woman’s cravings flipped was when…

  Then I realized, “No! No! It can’t be,” I said. I ran to the bathroom in a panic. I opened my bathroom cabinet and began searching through old boxes of q-tips, cotton balls, condoms, and things until I saw it. “There you are. Thank god. I couldn’t exactly go out and get one of you without everyone seeing,” I said as I clutched the at-home pregnancy test in my hand. I trembled. If I was, then this was going to be complex. I tried not to think about what to do until I took the test. But it was hard not to think about trying to hide an alien hybrid child while it flew around the house and you were the daughter of the President of the United States and all eyes were on you all the time. “Shit. This is not going to be good,” I said. So I took the test.

  “Come on! Hurry up,” I said to it, waiting for the three minutes to go by. Then my alarm on my Draqua went off. I turned it off and ran to the test.

  “Holy shit,” I said. “I’m pregnant. Oh my god, oh my god,” I said pacing back and forth with the test in my hand. “What the hell are you going to do now, Melody, since you are pregnant with Cylo’s child?” I smiled happily for a few seconds, then I was upset. This was not a good thing. I could not exactly have an alien baby on Earth. There would be no hiding that and then everyone would know the Draqua existed. Shit, shit. This was bad. This was really bad. I realized just how ironic it was that King Hydros wanted me gone from Kelon so that humans would not know about the Draqua, but in doing so, he sent me back pregnant with a Draqua offspring.

  Shit, what can I do now? I thought. Then it happened. I se
t into a deep depression. I could not move. I did not want to leave my bed in the morning, and I thought about nothing other than the fact that I wanted Cylo at my side and he was not around at all. I was going to have his offspring where the offspring would be considered alien, and I had to do it alone.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CYLO HYDROS

  “I am worried about you, Cylo,” my father said as he moved into my hut.

  “There is nothing to worry about,” I said.

  “You have not been yourself since you took your human to Earth. You are depressed. I have never met a depressed prince. The world is yours. Go enjoy it. We will find you another human,” he said.