Daughter of Orion

by Alfred D. Byrd

  ~~~

  I'd gone on five more of these, and wiped a slew of hard-drives, when one morning at breakfast the Colonel said to me, "Do you have anything planned tonight?"

  "Not really. I was thinking of going to Emily's to study --"

  "Could you go another time? Guests are coming from out of town. I want you to meet them."

  Without showing my fascination, I felt it. The Gordons often entertained guests from Paducah, but seldom guests from out of town.

  "Certainly, sir." After all, the Colonel had been courteous enough to ask me.

  Thinking of the guests, I got so distracted at school that I answered a question in class by saying that Shakespeare had written Oedipus Rex. My fellow students who knew the answer, as well as the teacher, stared at me as if I'd grown a red rubber nose.

  In the halls after class, Emily whispered to me, "Are you sick, Belle? That's the first time that I've heard you miss a question like that."

  "Sorry, Em. My mind is in the clouds. The Colonel has guests from out of town coming in tonight."

  "They must be some guests to put you off your feed. Tell me all tomorrow!"

  I was standing on the front porch with the Colonel and Mom -- Major, no longer frisky, at our feet -- when a car drove up. Three persons got out of it. They were a man as military looking as the Colonel, a lovely blonde woman, and a girl who swallowed my eyes. She had moon-pale skin, a round face, full lips, strawberry-blonde hair, and eyes of pale aquamarine. She might've been my reflection in a mirror, if I'd been two years younger than I was.

  I grew aware of the Colonel's speaking. "Pete, Melissa, Delia, this is my daughter, Mirabelle. Belle, this is my old army buddy, Captain le Mars, his wife, and their daughter, Delia."

  Delia, the Colonel called her, but I'd known her by another name when I led her around by the hand on his visit to Ul. In Tan speech, I blurted out, "Mi su-es Dal-a?"

  She gazed at me with enormous eyes and bit her lips. After a moment she said, "La, su-in Dal-a. Mi su-es Mir-a?"

  I could only nod at her.

  The Colonel beamed. "No doubt, you two girls will have much to say to each other. Just now, Annabel has supper ready. None of us wants it to get cold."

  The six of us repaired to table, as the saying goes in Victorian novels. After grace, which Captain le Mars said at the Colonel's request, the Colonel and the Major swapped war stories while Mom and Mrs. le Mars smiled at each other, and Dala and I stared at each other with enormous eyes. I recall nothing of what I ate till I swallowed the last bite of lemon meringue pie.

  At meal's end, the Colonel, with a knowing smile, said, "Belle, would you like to show Delia your room?"

  Would I! I asked her the question. Hardly had she said yes when I was dragging her upstairs in my eagerness to talk with her. Once she was in my room, though, I didn't talk with her, but caught her up in a hug that would've collapsed an earth-human's lungs. Dala, though, is made of stern stuff.

  "I can't believe that it's you, Dala!" I said at last. "Do you remember me?"

  She nodded slowly. "The time before seems like a dream to me, but I remember you from it. You were a princess, I think, but you were always kind to me. You always had a baby boy with you, and you were somehow married to him. What a strange world, where babies got married! I think that I got married the day before I came to the earth, but I can't recall my husband's name."

  "Van-Dor. He was a student in school with me in Gam Tol, the crystal-city, where you and I lived together. Do you know where any of the others are?"

  Dala shook her head. "Dr. Ventnor tells me of them sometimes when I visit him, but he's never told me where they are. I guess that, since Daddy is friends with your dad, Daddy knew where you were all along, but he never told me."

  "Maybe, our parents are starting to bring us together. Where do you live, Dala?"

  "Bennettsville, South Carolina."

  "Where's that?"

  She shrugged. "About as far from anywhere else as a place can be."

  "Some say that of Paducah. Maybe, the Colonel and Dr. Ventnor scattered us Tani in places as remote as they could find."

  Dala and I compared notes awhile on life in Bennettsville and life in Paducah. As we spoke, Major, who'd taken some time to make it upstairs, crawled onto my bed with Dala. She stroked him the rest of the time while she and I talked.

  After a while, Dala said, "You said that you and Van-Dor went to school in the time before. Did you learn how to read the books that came with us? I have eight of them, but I can't read them. I'd learned just a few words before I came here."

  Smiling, I picked up a whiteboard and drew a horizontal line on it. "Do you recall this sign?"

  It delighted me for her to giggle. "That's the sign for bas, sand. That's the first sign that I learned."

  "I can teach you more signs if you want to learn them."

  She did want to. She and I exchanged phone numbers and e mail addresses so that I could teach her long distance. At last, I had a lifeline to one of my own people. I would teach her to read.

  Just then, she had a dreamy look in her eyes. "There were all kinds of crystals where we lived, weren't there? Crystals of power! I have eight pink crystals that came in my ship, but they don't do anything anymore."

  "Those are bil-i kel-al, memory-crystals. When your crystal-shaping gift awakes, they'll show you sights and sounds of the Homeworld. Do you see the pink crystal on my dresser? It shows the Dance that the Tan did when Orion was high in the sky."

  Dala nodded. "The grown-ups spun in circles till the red sun came up, didn't they? There were all kinds of other crystals, too. Light-crystals, heat-crystals --"

  "I have some light-crystals. Would you like one?"

  Without awaiting her answer, I opened my dresser's top drawer and took out a large, clear crystal that began to shine with bright yellow light as I touched it. "This'll shine for hours unless I turn it off," I said as I put it into Dala's hands.

  "Amazing, Mira! Did this come with you in your ship?"

  Pride, I confess, made my voice purr. "I made it myself from directions in one of the old books."

  I got a chance of which I'd dreamed -- the chance to brag to another Tan of my exploits. Dala's face began to fall, though, as these went on.

  "I'm sorry, Dala. You must do special things, too."

  She shrugged. "I did run to Savannah, Georgia, and back once. It'll be a while before I can run again, though. Two nights ago, I was trying to run to Charlotte, North Carolina, when I stepped onto some twisted metal -- part of a muffler, I think -- that tore up my right foot. I had to call Daddy to come drive me home. My foot is healing, but it's a few days away from being healed."

  I nodded. "You'll heal almost at once when your crystal-shaping gift kicks in. May I see your foot, Dala?"

  Taking off her right sneaker, she showed me a sole gashed nearly to the bone. Wanting to test whether my diagnostic gift worked as well on a Tan as it worked on an earth-human, I took Dala's wounded foot into my hands. To my astonishment, power flowed out of me. The wound closed before my eyes.

  "Wow, Mira! Are you a miracle-worker?"

  I shook my head. "I didn't know that I could heal. Healing must be a function of how the crystal-shaping gift works on this world, as I've found no records of healings by hand in the old books. On the Homeworld, Crystal-Shapers needed healing-crystals to heal others. Maybe on this world, though, all of us will be able to heal by hand when we grow up."

  Dala sighed. "I wish that I could hurry."

  Mom knocked on the door and said that it was time for Dala and me to go to bed. We asked to sleep in my bed just as we'd shared a bed on Ul. We did scant sleeping, though. We talked in whispers till the light-crystal faded, and dawn was near.

  I dragged through school the next day, and told Emily, Kendra, and Millie that I'd met a fellow war-orphan from Afghanistan, a girl with the same genetic conditions that I had. Dala and her family stayed one more night, which she and I also filled with talk. The le Ma
rs family left for South Carolina after breakfast the next morning, but Dala and I had our lifelines to each other and used them often.

  In the light-crystals' glow, wise, artistic Sil-Tan raises a hand. "My question is for Dala. Your earth-father was a military officer. What did Captain le Mars teach you?"

  "Not to fight, if that's what you're asking. Daddy taught me wilderness-survival skills, and ways to escape attackers, but none of the breaking and entering and trashing things that Mira learned."

  Par-On gives Dala a look of interest. "What did you do with your gifts before you met Mira?"

  Dala shrugs. "Little things. Cleaning up stretches of highway and leaving bagged waste to be picked up. Pushing junked cars and trucks out of fields and streams to the side of the road to be towed off..."

  Fierce Kuma sniffs. "I've never understood why you did such things."

  "Dr. Ventnor told me that I came to the earth to save it. I did what I thought saving the earth meant."

  Par nods. "I believe that what Dala did is part of what my birth-father meant when he told Mira, 'Save the earth!'"

  All but two of the rest of us nod at Par's words. Kuma and dour, brooding Un-Thor, who might be inclined to dispute them, at least voice no objection to them.

  Mystical Lona strokes her chin. "I read about those road-cleanings and car-movings on the Internet, but I never associated them with a Tan till I actually met you, Dala."

  I sighed. "Neither did I, it shames me to say."

  Kuma grins. "I was the only one of us to figure out where others were with the Internet."

  I nod at her. "I'm getting to your part of the story. There's much more to tell before you enter it, though."