by Amber Kizer
The walls folded in on me. The world spun too fast, with colors too bright for my eyes, sounds too loud in my ears. The girl from my dream. The tiny, curly-haired girl with her hands outstretched had just showed up in real life at the creek. Older than I had dreamed, but the same girl. Her face and eyes felt so familiar.
Maybe I’m still asleep. “Nico, pinch me. Hard.”
Surprise and disbelief flashed across Nicole’s face. “Uh, no?”
I jiggled from foot to foot, too anxious to stand still. “Am I awake?”
Her brow furrowed, and her voice dipped, “What are you talking about?”
“Are you real?” I knew I sounded like I’d finally lost it, but I couldn’t explain in complete sentences. My brain tried to meld both my dream and the teens by the creek into my reality.
She hugged my shoulders, trying to quiet me. “You’re awake, Juliet. What’s going on?” Concern and pity marred her otherwise beautiful face.
“I can’t talk now—” What is happening to me? What does it all mean?
We startled at the sound of the intercom button. I braced for Mistress’s screech.
“Where are you, Juliet? Get your lazy self into my office pronto.” Her tone didn’t disappoint.
I was definitely wide awake. I never would have put rescue and Mistress in the same dream. More confused than defeated, I shrugged off Nicole’s grip. “Never mind. I’ll tell you later.”
“Okay, but—” She tried to follow, but stopped when I waved her off.
I stumbled into Mistress’s office, my feet not keeping up with the rest of me. I caught my apology in midbreath. Sorrys made things worse. Instead, I snapped to straight, erect attention. I tried to keep my expression bland and empty.
She glared at me. “We have three new guests arriving. I need you to prepare their rooms. Make sure they’re cleaner than last time. This is a respectable establishment. Clear?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I waited. I knew never to turn to leave until I was dismissed. Joining the military, my long-imagined last resort, once again passed through my mind. I took orders well. Stood with my knees locked and head high for hours without breaks. I operated on little sleep. But they’d turn away an almost-sixteen-year-old girl.
Five or ten minutes passed. I kept my eyes on the window behind Mistress’s desk. Waiting. There was more. There was always more.
When she’d kept me standing long enough, Mistress finally said, “Ms. Asura asked that you call her. You may use this phone.”
Privacy? No. Bewildered, I wondered why Ms. Asura wanted to speak to me.
As if to answer my unasked question, Mistress smirked. “February tenth is almost here. Arrangements must be made.”
My birthday. My stomach dropped and my mouth dried thinking about Bodie and Sema trying to survive this insanity. I knew Nicole would do the best she could, but would that be enough? I wanted to leave, but not without the innocents. There was no justice in moving on and leaving them behind. I wanted to curse; I bit my tongue until it bled.
“Do it!” she screamed, lunging into my face.
I flinched more for her benefit than because she startled me. The more we grovel, the less she picks. I grasped the phone and she punched the buttons while I held the handset. I’d sprout bruises from the pressure she inflicted.
“Juliet. I’ve been expecting your call.” Ms. Asura sounded pleased to hear from me. As if it was my idea to call her. Mistress glared and shuffled papers.
“Yes?” I questioned, trying to sound both meek and humble at the same time.
Ms. Asura must not have picked up on any of the tension, because her effervescence didn’t diminish. “I’d like to take you for coffee so we can talk about what’s next for you. How does that sound?”
Coffee? All her promised outings never amount to anything but more promises. She was busy. I understood that. Eventually, I’d learned they were plans she liked to talk about but never follow through on. Who wanted to hang out with kids when your day job was supervising them?
“Sure,” I said.
“Great. I’ll pick you up tomorrow at eleven.” She sounded so enthusiastic it was like I’d promised her my kidney.
“Um—” I glanced at Mistress, who’d given up the pretense of doing paperwork and now simply watched me with a scowl.
“It’s okay, I’ve cleared it.” Ms. Asura answered my unspoken question.
Mistress nodded, as if she read my hesitation too.
“Okay.” Did I have a choice? Stay here, or go for coffee like a real teenager? Was there a choice? Even if things were ten times worse when I returned, I’d go.
I heard Ms. Asura clap her hands. “I’m delighted. This will be fun.”
“Okay,” I repeated. Her excitement felt genuine.
“See you in the morning.” She hung up, and I quickly put the handset down.
“Every minute you’re away will be two minutes I expect repaid when you return,” Mistress grouched.
“Yes, ma’am.” More like ten.
“Here’s what must be completed before you leave.” She handed me a list of odd tasks—inventorying the pantry and washing the curtains—as well as my usual.
I glanced at the filing cabinet behind her. Wished I were brave enough to try again to get my file.
“Scat!” she yelled, a vein in the middle of her forehead throbbing.
I scurried out of the room to where Nicole waited for me in the shadows.
“What’s going on?” Speaking in low tones, she pressed against my side, matching my stride.
“Ms. Asura is taking me out for coffee tomorrow.”
Nicole’s face fell. “Really?”
“I’ll try to bring you some.” I could try, but odds weren’t good I’d get it back into the house without Mistress dumping it on the floor and making us lick it up.
“No, I don’t care about the coffee part. Just be careful, okay? I have a bad feeling.” Nicole frowned.
I wanted her to stop worrying so much. “Nothing bad can happen at a coffee shop.”
“Maybe, but watch what you say.” Her voice was both careful and demanding.
“She wants to talk about plans.” What plans? What future?
“Maybe. I don’t like it. Has she ever taken you out before?”
“No.” I didn’t understand why Nicole was so upset.
“Then why now?” She wouldn’t let it go.
“Because I’m turning sixteen?” I snapped.
“Are you sure that’s it? Maybe you should check the files.”
“How?” I wanted to. I really did.
“I’ll help—”
“Enough. I can’t think about this right now.” I shrugged. “Three more arrivals today.”
“Old or young?”
“Guests.” Old.
Nicole let me change the subject completely, but her sadness and worry still seemed to take tangible form in the space around us.
I watched a child be wiped of memories as both of his Fenestra parents perished. The child wasn’t one of us and didn’t need the burden. I wonder if that was the right choice—with the removal of grief, we removed the love as well.
Meridian Laine
December 7, 1941
CHAPTER 18
Tens and I wandered into Rumi’s studio. We wanted to talk to him about the box of papers. The artwork wasn’t difficult to interpret, but the writing was another story. We had to trust he indeed was friendly and would translate for us accurately. The Spirit Stones hanging from the windows and rafters once again burst with light. The people in the studio glanced up at them in surprise. Not so subtle an entrance.
“Aren’t these wondrous? The glass and the light have such a concinnity, a harmony. These are the Witch Balls of the seventeenth century,” Rumi covered, shooing us toward the door that swung into his living quarters. “They throw any stray ray like they are the sun itself. Let me tell you of the magic—don’t we all need a little magic in our lives?”
The door between
the studio and his apartment swung shut behind us while Rumi continued on, selling his creations to the rapt customers. The stereo played in the corner, a familiar dance groove that seemed to be Rumi’s favorite.
Tens and I worked in comfortable silence, unpacking the box, spreading the little paintings and drawings out on a big table. I studied them again, flipping through pages, squinting at faces. I felt like I should recognize something or someone. But other than a gut feeling that these had been painted by a Fenestra, I picked up nothing.
“Do you get any feeling from this stuff?” I asked Tens.
“I know you’re confused and worried.” He smiled. “But that’s because you’re biting your lips and sighing every three seconds.”
“Ha-ha.” I rolled my eyes.
Rumi pushed open the door and bounced in. “Ah, sorry for that. You’re quite the sales device. Sold a dozen for upcoming birthdays, bat mitzvahs, baby presents. How may I be of assistance today?”
“We didn’t mean to interrupt.” I licked my lips, wondering not for the first time if I needed to apologize for taking up his time.
“Not a problem.” He walked over to the table. “I see you’re intrigued by Ma’s keepings.” He bent over them, smiling recognition at the pages as if they were long-lost friends come home. He lumbered to the kitchen. “Beverages?”
“Sure,” I said, and Tens nodded.
Rumi made coffee for himself and poured us sparkling juice in brightly swirled tumblers that made drinking feel like swallowing a rainbow. “Did you find anything interesting in there?”
I picked up a small crinkled-leather sketchbook. “Can you tell us what the writing says?”
He nodded, sipping thoughtfully. “Most of it I can translate. Some … I don’t understand well enough to give you the English equivalent.”
“Do you know who did all these?”
“Not all of them. Some were my nain’s.” He shuffled through pages and pointed to initials in the bottom corner. “This is her. These are in my da’s handwriting, but I didn’t know him to be an artist, so I think maybe he wrote on the finished work. Like I said, I pieced it together.”
“Whatever you tell us will be helpful,” Tens assured him.
Rumi and Tens shared a moment of eye contact I didn’t understand. “Give me a minute here to reread so I tell you correctly. Where’d I lay my paper?” He patted his pockets and glanced around, frazzled.
I found pad and pen between the couch cushions and handed them to him.
He jotted words down on fresh paper. Mumbled. Shook his head. Nodded.
Tens and I sat quietly and waited. The tension of not knowing strung my spine tight. I resisted the urge to tap my heels or my fingers
Finally, he said, “Let’s start here.” He sorted a stack out and gestured. “These papers all point to the summer solstice as the day Good Death appears. When young women step forward to take their places at the bonfires, to be anointed. This is when babies with the gift first cry. I’m guessing that means they’re born on the summer solstice too. It’s a big celebration, ancestors return. Bonfires and Good Death are mentioned here.” He tapped the examples.
I shot a glance at Tens. Summer? That doesn’t make sense. If they’re Fenestra wouldn’t it be winter?
“Are you sure it says summer?” Tens questioned.
“A different season, maybe?” I asked.
“Definitely summer. Not easy to confuse summer with autumn or spring.”
“Winter?” My voice cracked.
He adamantly refuted, “Definitely not winter.”
“And it says that’s when babies are born with a gift?” Tens held up a page as if reading it himself would help the pieces fit together.
“Uh-huh. Why do I get the sense you were hoping for a specific answer to these questions?” Rumi rubbed his eyes and took another swallow of coffee so we could contemplate his question.
Tens gave him a small smile, a mere lift of his lips.
I puzzled to myself, “It’s December twenty-first. It’s the winter solstice.” Fenestras are always born on the winter solstice.
“For what?” Rumi tapped my shoulder.
“For— Did I say that out loud?”
“Nah, of course not.” Rumi must have seen something on my face because he decided at that moment he needed a beverage refill. Whistling, he walked over to the kitchen and turned on the faucet. I appreciated him trying to give us some semblance of privacy.
Tens leaned forward. “What if it’s not just December, Supergirl? What if there are more family lines out there? Your ancestors found the winter solstice as theirs, but wouldn’t it make sense that maybe others came to be on other dates?”
“What would that prove?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” Tens shrugged and leaned away. “Hey, Rumi?”
“Yes.” Rumi turned off the water and leaned against the counter, his face open and calm.
Tens balanced his chair on its back legs, tipping himself precariously. He looked for all the world like a kid in detention for shooting spitballs. “Is there a birth date that’s popular in your family’s history?”
“Like do we all have birthdays around the summer solstice?” Rumi smiled. “You forget I’m a cagey old man. I’ve been trying to think. We’re mostly June babies. But not all of us celebrated birth dates like they do now. Not necessarily on the solstice, but maybe. Let me look here.” He went to a book stand and opened a massive book. “The family Bible. Generations of birth dates, marriages, and deaths in here.”
The book must have weighed forty pounds, but he lifted it as if it were a handkerchief and set it on the table between Tens and me. “Look here.” He pointed.
We all leaned over the ancient parchment and tried to read the names and dates that branched around in a tree shape. If the words had been typed, the font size would have been a four. Maybe.
“I’m getting too antiquated to read this. Take a look without me.” Rumi sat back at the head of the table. Tens studied one side while I did the other.
“I count six,” he said.
“I see seven,” I finished.
“Plus, lots of them are close on one side or the other. And the weddings are on the twenty-first as well.”
Rumi whistled. “Interesting. Seems like a disproportionate number? Lots of harvest mating?”
I swallowed, not sure what to say, but it didn’t matter. Rumi continued as if he were having a conversation with himself.
Rumi tapped another little black book. “Here’s the next bit you should know. Might be something. Might be nothing. This belonged to my father’s brother, at least according to the writer. But I never knew him. I never even knew he existed until after Ma died and I read through all this.”
“Oh. But there could be all sorts of explanation for why they didn’t tell you—”
“That’s the part that’s bothered me. I knew about uncles and aunts that died as babies, or who were sent to the British colonies because they were criminals in the twentieth century—”
“They did that in the twentieth century?”
“Yep, didn’t really stop until mid-century or later. The poor and criminals got carted off in the Queen’s name. I knew about the ones who died in barroom brawls and at war. Even a leper.” He ticked off his fingers as if counting up the death stories.
“Big family?”
He agreed. “Yep, but family stories are family stories—they’d be brought up every reunion over whiskey or cake. I thought maybe I could have forgotten something, so I asked my sister, who has a head for facts and figures. She doesn’t remember hearing about this boy at all. Never. So I asked the rest of my living siblings.”
“And?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“No one’s ever heard of him.”
“Well, what does he say in the book?” I asked.
“I don’t know if he was moonstruck or making up stories, mind you. It’s hard to tell. He talked about dead anim
als. He used to cut them up and look at their insides. He was twisted, if what he wrote is true. But he looked forward to his birthday. In the last entry he was excited to be a man and take his place in the ritual.”
“What ritual?”
“I don’t know. But I know this, his birthday was June twenty-first and I can’t find any mention of him anywhere. Just this little book.”
A chill danced down my spine.
The phone rang deep in the cushions of a chair and Rumi ambled over to answer it, upsetting the couch as he went.
Tens leaned into me. “Wouldn’t it be harder to spot Fenestras if they weren’t all born on the same day? What if different parts of the world or different families came into their own at different times?”
I followed his train of thought. “That way if the Nocti found them or they were wiped out by other forces, there wasn’t a trail to all of them. Like a terrorist cell—you only know what you know, but not enough to hurt anyone else?”
“I don’t think I’d compare Fenestras to terrorists, but yeah, that’s what I meant.”
“If he’s right, then Rumi is related to Fenestra.”
“Or Nocti.” Tens frowned down at the little black book.
Tell me, why is this my destiny? Is there no one else more deserving of the torture?
Dic mihi, cur fato meo haec patior? Nemone cruciatu dignior est?
Luca Lenci
CHAPTER 19
We’d left Rumi working on translating more of the pieces; I needed food, a hot bath, and a little peace. Two out of three might be possible.
Tens slanted a glance at me in the truck cab. “Need a soak?”
My shoulders were knotted into macramé. Rubbing seemed to make them worse. “Maybe. Probably.”
“You okay?” Tens shut off the engine, but neither of us left the truck.
I shook my head. “No.”
“More words, please?” His lips twisted up as his fingers found the bare skin where my neck and shoulders met.
A shiver from the contact and his tiny smile had me sliding closer. I snuggled into the curve of his side while he wrapped his arm around me. I inhaled the heady scent of him before saying, “I keep thinking we’ll get to the place where we know what’s going on.”
