The Kaleidoscope Sisters

by Ronnie K. Stephens

  “I’m really going to miss you, kid.”

  Riley didn’t respond.

  “For a long time, I thought I was prepared for this. You were loaned to us—that’s what mom used to say. We knew you couldn’t stay. But what will I do with my nights when I don’t have you to bathe and listen to my stories? Will my stories die, too? I guess I wrote most of them for you, so there won’t be much reason for them after—” Quinn trailed off.

  “Say the words,” Riley whispered. “I’m tired of avoiding them. After I’m dead. Let me hear you say the words.”

  But Quinn didn’t say the words. Riley wasn’t going anywhere. Quinn was the one leaving.

  * * *

  “You promised me a story,” Riley insisted, pulling her comforter up to her chin.

  Quinn nodded.

  “Did you finish the ending?”

  “Yeah . . .” her voice trailed off. She knew exactly how the story would end, and she was determined to tell her sister the truth. She just couldn’t tell her the whole truth.

  Riley gave her a sassy stare, emphasizing her wide eyes with a broad sweep of her hand.

  “All right, all right. Move over, brat.” Quinn slid under the covers and propped herself up facing Riley. “This one is a long one, maybe a little hard to believe, so bear with me. Everything you’re about to hear is absolutely true. This is the story of the day I fell into a pond and found a whole world at the bottom.”

  She started at the beginning, with the note she took to the butterfly garden. Quinn recounted every detail of her time in the other realm and even got out of the bed to indicate the size of the hen that almost ran her over. When she got to the glowing butterflies, Riley gasped, clapping her hands over her mouth. She was so excited by the idea that she sat up in bed, a glimmer of her former energy coursing through her body. Quinn kept going, afraid that she would lose her nerve with any pause in the story. When she got to the part about putting a heart flower in Riley’s chest, her sister instinctively touched her chest. Quinn was grateful that the lights were already off; otherwise, Riley might have searched for the red freckle. Talking about getting trapped in the ocean made her chest pound. She could hear her voice wavering, but she pressed on.

  “I turned, and that’s when I saw a shadowy glow between me and the small boat. So I did the only thing I could do: I dove.”

  “You didn’t!” Riley shouted.

  “I did. And I’m glad I did because that’s how I found the island. You see, all the shoals and sandbars used to be the tips of mountains, but rain swallowed everything up. Except the mountains had caves in them. For whatever reason, the water couldn’t enter the caves. As soon as I ducked my head under water, I saw the entrance to one of the caves shining in front of me. I had to swim down until my whole body burned. I knew I would black out if I turned back, so I swam deeper. Just as my head began to throb, I fell into the cave.

  “Like most things in the other realm, almost everything I saw was luminous. That means they had light coming from inside them. Even though I didn’t have a flashlight or a lantern, I could see all right. I didn’t have my butterfly net anymore, though, so I had to track the swarm by the faint trail of scales that fell from their wings. I went farther and farther into the cave, which was scary because I worried that I wouldn’t be able to find my way back. Knowing that you were back home in the hospital gave me strength, made me brave.

  “Finally, after what felt like hours, I turned a corner, and the swarm was right in front of me! They flew in tight circles, scales trickling down like a radiant mist. Beneath the swarm, I saw a patch of heart flowers, enough to save you a hundred times over. I was so excited that I bolted for the patch, flinging myself into the bulbs. I snatched two from their stems and zipped them into my hoodie.”

  “Why two?”

  “I just wanted to be sure, you know. What if something happened to one of the bulbs? I couldn’t come home without a way to save you—you’re my sister. Anyway, now that I had heart flowers, I knew that I had to find a portal to get back to you. The hard part was that portals are usually under water. Since no water can get into the caves, I couldn’t see any pools or ponds anywhere. That’s when I realized that I would have to swim back out into the ocean. People can’t survive at the bottom of the ocean here, so I figured the same was true in the other realm. If I was going to get to a portal, I would have to go deeper into the caves. I started looking everywhere for places where the caves slopped downward. When I got to a cavern where the entire floor was flat, I figured that I had gone as far down as I could. Next, I followed the sound of rushing water until I found an opening.

  “The water outside was darker than anything I’ve ever seen, but I could just make out a shimmer not far from the cave wall. I took breath and lunged back into the ocean. The pressure was immediate. My whole body felt like someone was squeezing me into a tiny ball. I pushed with everything I had. Then, I went black. The next thing I remember, I was passing through the portal. I came out in the middle of the river down by the park. I immediately checked my jacket for the heart flowers, then panicked because I couldn’t find anything at all on my left side. That’s when I remembered that I had zipped two into the jacket, so I checked my right side and found one still there. I was so glad that I had grabbed an extra bulb, or I wouldn’t have come back with anything at all!

  “Once I got myself out of the river, I knew I had to get to you. Even though I hadn’t eaten in days, I started for the hospital. I weaved through the halls until I found your room, but I was scared to go in. You and mom were asleep. After a while, and some pestering from nurses, I crept inside, unzipped my hoodie, and put a heart flower on your chest. The rest, well, you know.”

  Quinn pulled one of the kaleidoscopes from her shelf and ran a finger over the lens.

  “Where did you get all those things anyway?” Riley asked, her voice scratchy and soft.

  “From Dad, mostly.”

  “Is that why you stopped collecting them after I was born?”

  “I suppose. But I also had something much better to hold my attention,” Quinn smiled, tousling Riley’s hair. “Kaleidoscopes show people how broken things can be beautiful again. Once I met you, kid, I just didn’t need the reminder.”

  Riley made a low, whistling sound. Quinn looked at her and saw that Riley’s eyes were closed. She was fast asleep, her small, warm head nestled against Quinn’s chest.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Quinn lay next to Riley well into the night, desperately trying to memorize everything about the room and her sister and her old life. She waited until the moon began to descend, then slid from the bed—a difficult task with Butterfly snoring beneath the girls. She retrieved the knapsack she had hidden in one of the pillows on her bed, feeling around blindly to make sure she had everything she needed. Leaving for the other realm inspired many questions she hadn’t considered before, like what people used to brush their teeth and how she would wash her clothes. Perhaps those in the other realm chose specific people to return to her world every so often for supplies. Most answers she would have to learn the hard way, but Quinn had found a few sample toothbrushes and travel-sized toothpaste tubes from the dentist that would at least keep her teeth clean for a while.

  Once she was sure that she had everything she could take without rousing suspicion, Quinn went to her desk. She pulled the leather-bound notebook from the drawer, arranging the other spirals to frame the gift for Riley. Quinn hoped that Riley’s curiosity would push her to read through the spiral notebooks, but she knew that she would have to leave some sort of note or Riley would avoid the leather-bound journal. Something about the craftsmanship made the book appear more personal than the other notebooks. A note would be tricky, though, as Quinn didn’t want to be too obvious about her plan to leave the family behind. Her disappearance couldn’t look like a sacrifice, otherwise Riley would spend her entire life carrying the guilt of survival with her. She had been thinking about the note all day, but had yet to come up
with the right words. Fearing that her mother would be awake again soon, she scribbled the only thing that came to mind:

  Riley,

  This story isn’t mine, but yours. You have been at the center of everything I’ve written, but this . . . this one is different. The words say that I saved you. That’s not true. You saved me. You gave me purpose.

  Love,

  Your Favorite Storyteller

  P.S. Did you know that a group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope?

  Never stop looking for beauty in broken things.

  Quinn opened the journal to the story she had penned earlier that afternoon, using the note as a makeshift bookmark. When she closed the journal, the only word still visible was Riley’s name. Surely that would be enough for her sister to at least open the journal. Next to the journal, she placed one of her favorite kaleidoscopes, one with brass tubing and two wheels speckled with shards of stained glass.

  Tears welled up in Quinn’s eyes. She hurried to the door, eased out into the hall with her knapsack, then crept from her house. The click of the latch on the front door sounded far away to Quinn. She leaned on the door, putting her hands flat against the polished wood. She let herself weep; anyway, better to break down on her front porch than walking along the street. The sun peeked over the horizon, smearing pink and orange across the sky. Quinn stood up, brushed herself off, and headed for the river. While she walked, she studied the dawn, committing the scene to memory. Where she was headed, light emanated not from a single point, but from within each living thing. If light really did signify hope, as her teachers had taught her, perhaps she was leaving a place with a single, finite point of hope for a world with optimism in the atmosphere.

  The closer she got to the river, the more she noticed about Earth. Though many of her observations had been explained to her by science teachers over the years, she hadn’t really considered the implications of the various facts. Sunflowers, for instance, followed the sun’s movement throughout the day. What would a sunflower do in the other realm? Blades of grass, too, bent themselves toward their light source. The effect was so profound that some golfers even studied the lean of turf at different times of day. Was that why the landscapes in the other realm were so barren? Certainly plants couldn’t function the same way, since photosynthesis would be impossible without regular access to ultraviolet light. Quinn had been so wrapped up in the idea of living without her family that she hadn’t stopped to think about the fact that she was also leaving everything she knew behind. In the other realm, she would have to learn not just how to look after herself, but also how to gather and prepare meals, how to survive at the most basic level.

  Wind swirled, kicking dust into the air. Leaves and even small branches rattled to the ground around Quinn. She pulled her hood over her head and kept her eyes fixed on the ground to avoid the onslaught of dirt and debris. She could smell rain in the air again. Some streets still had puddles from the last storm, and she remembered a reporter saying that the river was already twelve feet above normal for this time of year. The temperature was cooler than usual, too. This, at least, meant that the river walk would be relatively empty. Most people avoided the parks and walking trails at the slightest hint of a cold, wet forecast. Quinn was grateful that she would be able to walk along the shore unnoticed. If anyone saw her swimming out into the water, they were sure to call the police since swimming was strictly prohibited inside the city, and for good reason: the combination of industry and wind patterns made the river prone to whirlpools. Entering the other realm would be safer at the butterfly garden, but Quinn couldn’t risk a lengthy search for another heart flower. Riley was fading too quickly for that. She needed to get a bulb into her sister as fast as possible, then get back to the other realm before Riley began to deteriorate again. Her only hope was to find the portal she had come through in the river, then enter the other realm right next to the submerged caves.

  Quinn hurried along the shoreline, scanning the water for any shadow or darker patch of blue that might indicate a portal at the bottom. This proved more difficult than she had anticipated, as the surface was churning in the wind. Everywhere she looked, she saw only froth and white caps. Desperate, she shut her eyes and tried to remember what she had seen on her last return. Blacking out had made her delirious, but she had a vague recollection of blue bicycles and giant anthills. Quinn racked her brain, sifting through the various parks and landmarks she had walked past a hundred times. The city had installed bike-renting stations near every park, so she hurried from one to the next. Finally, she neared a splash pad with massive green-brown hills surrounding the fountain. In her fog, she had mistaken them for anthills, but they were actually turf-covered slopes for parents to sit on while kids played.

  Quinn jogged ahead with renewed fervor. Her heart was pounding as she stared out at the river. She was a strong swimmer, but the churning water threatened to form a vortex any minute. If she wasn’t careful, she could be pushed to the bottom of the river far from the portal or, worse yet, carried down river by the current. She decided to leave her hoodie behind so that she would have a greater range of motion and less drag. Quinn wedged the jacket under a rock just beneath the surface, hoping that would be enough to conceal her entry into the water. Next, she tucked the knapsack inside her shirt, tightening the rope against her shoulders. Behind her, traffic had picked up as folks streamed to work. She thought of her mother, probably sipping from an old coffee mug at the table in silence. She thought of Riley curled around Butterfly, cooing into his fur. And then, seeing a gap in the traffic, she leapt into the river.

  The water was colder than she expected. Her arms sprouted gooseflesh within seconds, but she wasn’t deterred. Quinn gritted her teeth, digging in hard with each stroke, taking a short breath every time she plunged her right arm into the water. Since she had come to in the middle of the river on her last return, she assumed that she would need to get as far out as she could before she dove down to the bottom. Her arms and lungs burned, and her strokes were becoming less pronounced. She looked back to see that was she a mere ten yards from shore. She still had at least forty yards to go if she was going to get to the deepest part of the river. To make matters worse, the current was beginning to spin around her. She kicked off her shoes, took a deep breath, and pushed forward.

  Quinn’s deliberate strokes devolved into a slow paddle aided by frantic kicks. Her entire upper body ached, and she had a harder and harder time catching her breath. Each time she inhaled, spray from the angry river would hit the back of her throat. She was twenty or so yards from where she had come through on her last return, and the water seemed to counter every effort to go farther. Desperate, she decided to try swimming beneath the surface; perhaps the current would be more manageable if she could go deep enough. Quinn paused, taking several slow, deep breaths as best she could, then let herself sink. Knowing that she wouldn’t be able to stay under for long, she combined strong breaststrokes with short, rapid kicks. She moved through the water with ease. Even with her eyes closed, she could sense that she was nearing the portal from the intermittent bursts of frigid water around her. She had been under for nearly two minutes. Quinn’s ears popped, and her head throbbed. She saw pricks of light in the blackness behind her eyes. Her body was turning on her, hungry for oxygen. And then she heard a familiar sound: the pulse of a heart flower. Without hesitation, she angled her body toward the sound and descended. She opened her eyes; in front of her, almost close enough to touch, she saw the faint glow of a bulb. The bulb she had lost when she came back from the other realm. One more hard kick, and she had the heart flower in her hand. Her body jerked. Something inside her forced a breath, filling her mouth and lungs with water. She clutched her chest, but she couldn’t cough. The last thing she felt before losing consciousness was the sudden, very cold, tug of the vortex.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Meelie stood at the edge of the cave, looking out into the deep sea. She had been searching the submerged island fo
r days, but Quinn was nowhere to be found. Aimee would be returning soon with the children. Together, Meelie hoped they could check every nook and cranny for her lost friend. That had been the plan, at least. But now, staring at a patch of black water in the midst of so much midnight blue, Meelie wondered if Quinn had found her way home after all. One of the chambers she’d seen certainly contained enough of the rare, magical flowers to save Riley several dozen times. Perhaps Quinn had simply gone home.

  Home. The word haunted Meelie. The other realm had welcomed her, yet she had not embraced the strange world as anything but a temporary haven. Of course, she had dragged her feet for so long that she had nothing left of her old life. No one was waiting for her on the other side. She had long felt like a woman swallowed by one planet and spat out by another. The truth was that Meelie had avoided gateways her entire time in the other realm. If one of the children found one, she routed her movements so that she didn’t come within half a mile of the portal. That is, until Quinn disappeared into a drowned cavern. Sure enough, her fear had been justified; only a dozen or so yards away, the dark patch called to her. Above her, Meelie heard the din of five old children trampling through the caves. She was too mesmerized by the sight in front of her to turn around, but she called to them over her shoulder. The cave had excellent acoustics, carrying her message through each chamber undistorted.