Letters From the Sky

by Tamer Lorika

  With a spark of inspiration, Jeanne leapt from her bed, ripped a page out of her math notebook, and began to feverishly write:

  Please please please come back I feel like this is my last chance to see you again ever tell me I’m not dreaming tell me I’m not just chasing a prayer tell me anything just come back—

  Her pen trailed off the paper because there weren’t any more words, just an ocean of voiceless pleas. With trembling fingers she folded the paper, refolded it, made the triangular tip, the wings. She scrambled over to the window and heaved it open with the kitten silently at her heels. Her bare feet scraped over the sill as she pulled herself out of the window to stand on the rough and windy roof. Traction was easy up here; the shingles underneath her were sloped but not sharply. She found her balance, closed her eyes, waited—

  There. A gust of wind strong enough to carry her heart wherever it always went. With a powerful cry she drew back her arm and flung the paper airplane as far as she possibly could.

  As it left her fingers, the world stopped breathing. The wind stopped sighing and, just as suddenly as it had taken flight, the letter crashed, soundlessly, falling like a stone, somewhere on the muddy street below.

  Maman found Jeanne on the roof, curled with her knees to her chest and staring at absolutely nothing. Perhaps it was just the sunrise—yes, Maman, it’s a beautiful sunrise; Jeanne’s dull reply.

  “Well, don’t sit on the roof, you’ll fall,” Maman said reprovingly, and that was that, life went on. For Jeanne, life went on and that was all there was to it.

  * * * *

  It was drawing close to the end of September and the days were beginning to blur into greyness. Cold was not set to hit, not yet, but Jeanne found herself awake and shivering in the mornings, bundled herself in sweaters before heading to school. Her mother put a hand to her forehead almost as a matter of course, checking for fever or cold. There was never such a thing.

  The kitten would follow her to school, until she reached the corner where Paris and Jedrick would be waiting and bickering. It was never in her room when she returned, though; only as she was about to go to sleep would the kitten reappear from wherever it had been haunting and curl up beside her head as she closed her eyes. It felt, these days, that as soon as her lids blinked shut, they would open again; that was how deeply she slept. No dreams.

  Needless to say, no dreams.

  She tore out her drawings from the math notebook, stuck them under a candle flame when no one was looking, then washed the ashes down the sink. She particularly hated that horrible red ribbon she had sketched in class. What a sad, fae story.

  On the last day in September, Jeanne stripped off her skirt and blouse as always, shrugged into her nightgown, and peeled off her socks. She lay in bed, squirming under the covers, and waited for the kitten to come and curl up beside her.

  It didn’t.

  She furrowed her eyebrows, blinking slowly. Almost the moment she was able to shimmer under the covers, the kitten would appear and pad across the sheets. Tonight it didn’t come. Jeanne stared, uncomprehending, at the spot on the pillow where it was supposed to sleep. She was so preoccupied with her thoughts, she didn’t even notice her eyes begin to droop as she drifted off into sleep.

  * * * *

  If a seabird flew over the ocean, watching as the black steel shot away from them and spat under it, it would see the island. The outcrop was tiny, all black, crystal rock, chipped and razor sharp and hoary. In the very center of the island, like the pupil of a dark, heartless eye, was a single glowing point.

  The point was red and orange and pulsed with a vibrating energy that spread. Slowly, over hours or days or weeks, it spread, oozing over the ground and consuming the black rock, melting it. It dripped over little hills and rills and hissed against the cold air, steaming and congealing and setting up steaming clouds of sulfurous smoke. Where it dripped to the sea, there was a susurrus of finality as the flame winked out. But there was always more flame to take its place, building on the bodies of its brethren as it stretched its arms into the sea.

  Sparks were flaring from the white, glowing heart of the light, catching the black on fire for a few spare, green seconds before winking out. The sea wind pulled the flickering sparks to the right, the left, ignited and doused them, but it could do nothing for the burning trails of lava spreading across the island.

  If the bird were to care enough, in its sojourn, to look closely at the black rock that made up the land, it might be able to find familiar shapes. There were long, jagged pieces of burnt material, knobbed at each end, or scraps of what could have been plants, had they lived. There were hollow shells with knobules that had once been vaguely spherical: A femur, a scrap of cloth, a skull.

  That was all that was left of what had once lived on the island, and soon the glowing white light swallowed that, as well.

  * * * *

  Jeanne’s eyes flared open to the sound of planes and motors. She stumbled out of her room, banging down the staircase until she reached the bathroom, and the growling engines faded. She threw up the contents of her stomach into the toilet, retching pathetically even when nothing else would come out. She tasted bile and burnt flesh and it hurt.

  She hung over the bowl for a long, long moment, her whole body shaking. Finally, aware she could not be found asleep on the bathroom floor again—don’t make Maman worry, or the others, they are transparent as it is—she wiped her mouth and flushed away the remnants of her dream, leaning over the sink to spit and rinse and wash away.

  She was so tired. Spitting one last time, the taste gone but for the smooth blankness of water, she stumbled back upstairs. Passed her parent’s room and Gramaman’s as she went. Papa still snored like a groaning truck. She padded quietly the rest of the way up, turning to close the door and let the blackness overtake the room.

  “Jeanne.”

  She whirled, her heart springing to her throat as she let out a pained cry and dropped to her knees. Her voice was high and keening. “No, no no no…” she sobbed.

  “Jeanne—”

  Jeanne was swamped with the unbearable hurt and loneliness and that agony of hope, and another whirling feeling, worry and guilt, crippling and staggering, confusion but oh—

  Warm arms wrapped around her waist, her shoulders, holding her against a heaving chest. She shook violently, pushing the body away, yelling—though what she yelled, she wasn’t sure, just nonsense—begging, struggling, attempting to inflict pain and damage.

  “Jeanne, Jeanne, Jeanne…” Mumbled against her neck, the words soft and almost tickling, smelling of cinnamon and yeast.

  Jeanne gave in. She let her entire body fall limp and sobbed against the warm chest with its familiar heartbeat.

  “Jericho,” she whimpered. “Jericho.” She said the name out loud, savoring it, after having locked it away for days and weeks.

  “Jeanne, why…oh, what has happened…” It was less of a question, more of a lament, aching and grief-laden in its own way.

  “Y—you…you don’t exist,” Jeanne sobbed. “You can’t—you don’t—I knew—I saw you but you didn’t really—”

  “Oh, oh little one…” Jericho bent her head to place her lips on the girl’s cheek. Jeanne felt the lips move against her skin. “Why can you not believe in me?”

  “You don’t exist!” Jeanne’s voice cracked. “You can’t exist…”

  “But now, what about now? Now that you can touch me.”

  “I’m…I’m dreaming.” But Jeanne’s fingers found their way to Jericho’s arm, tightening slightly, a reassurance she was not dreaming, not at all.

  “What can I do to make you believe in me?”

  “You can’t exist. I gave up on you.”

  Oh, but that made her chest hurt.

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  “No!” Jeanne clutched tighter at Jericho. “No, please, don’t leave me…”

  “I told you—”

  “I don’t care! I don’t—I’m being
selfish and horrible, but, Jericho, I don’t care. You left me alone for so long and I need you so badly—”

  “Jeanne.”

  The girl fell silent with a sharp bite of her lips, closing off the rest of her words.

  Jericho said, “I tried to find you after the blackout.”

  Jeanne shuddered, memories of darkness and cold and being trapped threatening to overwhelm her. But it was all right now. She was warm, warmer than she had been in a very, very long time.

  “I tried to get to you, but you slept so soundly and I couldn’t get into your head. I couldn’t wake you up.”

  “I slept without dreams for weeks,” Jeanne admitted. “For a time, the kitten slept with me.”

  “A…kitten?”

  Jeanne nodded. “A beautiful distraction. It’s what kept me from going crazy. It helped me sleep.”

  Jericho frowned. “I’m so sorry, Jeanne. I wanted to be near you so badly. I need…Jeanne, I promise, I won’t leave you anymore.”

  Jeanne gasped, not because of the words but because of the power behind them. Some invisible, otherworldly line had been crossed; she felt an ironclad rule had been broken. It was terrifying. “Jericho, what—”

  “Shh…it’s all right. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

  An admission that something, indeed, was wrong. And yet, her words were a liquid shot of comfort.

  Then their meaning sank in.

  “You—you won’t…Jericho?”

  For the first time in too long, too long, Jeanne stared, aghast, into Jericho’s blank black eyes. They were hard, and steely, and cold, and perfect oh—

  “As long as I still exist, in whatever state I do, I promise I won’t leave you anymore. You…I have to watch out for you, don’t I?”

  Jeanne laughed, a strange sort of half-sob, struck with the impossibility of the opportunity, but if she were already deluding herself, what could harm could a little more misplaced hope do? “Yes. Yes, watch out for me. Anything. Stay.”

  “Then I will do something for you. It…I’ve been told of something that can connect us.”

  “Deeper than we are already?”

  “If you truly cannot trust in me then, yes, deeper is necessary.”

  Jeanne nodded, not chastised in the least. Jericho’s words were not meant to be chastising. “Why have you held back?”

  “It’s…Jeanne, I’m breaking rules.”

  Something selfish and vicious in Jeanne wanted to retort, to ask jealously if she were less important than the rules, but that dark part of her heart was quietly dismembered, stored in harmless stone jars somewhere in the back of her chest. Instead, she let Jericho continue.

  “You know I’m not even supposed to be here. Interfering with your course of life—it’s unforgivable. Jeanne, I’m altering the path of nature. I’m doing something horrible. Can’t you see you’re better off without—”

  “Say a word more and I—I’ll…” Jeanne could not think of a proper threat.

  But the desperation in her voice must have been punishment enough for Jericho, who closed her mouth with a click then paused for a length. She spoke again. “It’s more invasive than anything I have done before. I’ll need to put my mark on you. Once that happens, everyone will know you and I belong together. The universe itself will know I have set you aside and am willing to fight for you. Anything between us is swept away, do you understand? The bones of the earth themselves must respect what we are.”

  “Not so frightening,” came the quick lie. “Anything.”

  “I won’t be able to come at your call,” Jericho warned. “It isn’t fair, but it’s…necessary. But you won’t ever feel alone. Such a mark is weighty. It hurts. It’s going to hurt, Jeanne, but you won’t be able to deny I exist anymore. That is what it will mean for us. You will feel me in everything you do.”

  It may have been odd, but that was all Jeanne ever wanted. What simple dreams; impossible ones, she’d thought.

  “Jericho, please, please…anything, just don’t leave me alone.”

  Jericho sighed, content, her strange, huge eyes blinking shut for a moment. She held Jeanne’s face in soft fingers, stroking it, before leaning in and pressing her lips against Jeanne’s own.

  A first kiss is said to be many things. Some see it as awkward and pure, a first exploration, both sides nervous and unsure. Such things are beautiful.

  For others it’s a spark, an immediate connection, something to solidify.

  For others still, it’s a warning sign. An awkward tilt of the head, a strange fusion of bodies that do not belong together.

  For Jeanne it was easy, as easy as breathing, something she had never considered with any force at all but, once it happened, she could not imagine a moment without these lips pressed against hers. It made her dizzy—not the kiss itself, but the feeling of utter solace. Perhaps these last few weeks had hurt so badly, she was not sure who she was any longer. But all of that did not seem to matter, really, when faced with what was in front of her at this moment.

  Always Jericho was so warm; but now, in this moment of closeness, was a slow-burn Jeanne had not been expecting. She expected nothing at all, but…is this what a kiss was to feel like? Something told her perhaps love-games as traditional at her age were no comparison at all. She was completely out of her depth, out of her mind.

  Jericho broke away. For a moment, the two stared at each other, endless black to graphite grey.

  Some things were to stay constant, no matter the relationship or the closeness. At the same time, both the girl and the guardian blushed deeply, unable to look at each other, unwilling to pull completely away.

  “W—what a fine pair of maidens we are,” Jeanne whispered to fill the silence.

  Jericho smiled, her canines sharp and face alight.

  “Proof,” she said simply.

  She did not say of what. Maybe it was proof of everything, anything at all. Something to hold on to. Something solid. How odd, that a kiss could be such a thing.

  “If we can be connected, I’ll do it,” Jeanne repeated after a comforting, comfortable silence.

  “I just…wanted to draw out my time here a bit longer,” Jericho admitted. “I’m afraid it will—no, I know it will hurt. I’m afraid you will fall asleep when it is over, and I don’t want to leave you just yet.”

  “Do you always leave immediately, when I can’t keep my eyes open any longer?”

  Jericho looked at her as if the question was absurd and Jeanne furrowed her eyebrows. “Don’t look at me as if I am a child,” she said, petulantly.

  “Stop acting like one,” Jericho retorted with a soft grin. “And no, I never leave immediately, not until I have to. I…like to watch over you, when I can.”

  Jeanne smiled, small and fragile. “Thank you.”

  “Now…?”

  “Yes.”

  They still sprawled on the floor, leaning against the bedroom door. With Jeanne’s affirmation, Jericho stood, pulling up Jeanne with her.

  “Lie back on the bed,” Jericho told her, placing her hands on Jeanne’s shoulders. Jeanne felt the bulge of cushions at her back, and her bare feet curled in the quilt in silent anticipation. Jericho was so close, and for some reason, the situation was as strange and alien as the kiss before had been comfortable. More intimate than before, but how could that be?

  Jericho closed her impossible eyes, then cupped Jeanne’s cheek, gently, as if afraid she’d break. Jeanne’s eyes fluttered closed. She felt breath against her skin, uneven, as if the breather were mouthing arcane words.

  Jericho’s fingers were always so warm, no matter the temperature of the room or the girl, but at the moment they felt even more so, hot, feverish. Slowly, ever so slowly, they gained temperature.

  Jeanne, unseeing, felt every spinning rise in heat. It began to itch against her skin, sweat filming between her flesh and Jericho’s. Briefly Jeanne allowed herself a tiny moment of hate for even such a thin and fleeting barrier as sweat or skin, then let
the irrational thought ebb, growing uncomfortable.

  “It will hurt…”

  “Keep going. Don’t ask, please don’t, because you know nothing is worse than not knowing you are here.”

  Jericho didn’t ask again. The steel in both of them was bare and bleeding, and both were too selfish to stop now, anyway.

  The fingers on Jeanne’s cheek did not move, but heated up. It hurt, not badly, more like placing a hand too close to the stove. Jericho’s lips continued to move silently.

  Hotter, like a piece of metal, and now the pain was beginning to hit in nauseating waves, more powerful than either had been expecting. The pain may have not have been shared, and yet, impossibly, Jeanne could tell by the look on Jericho’s face that the creature, too, felt each rise in temperature, each crest of heat.

  Every impulse in Jeanne’s body told her to flinch away, but her nerves had gone numb and she was trapped within her own limbs, eyes squeezed shut, lips slightly parted. She smelled burning flesh; she knew it was her own—she had not understood the mark would be a brand, that it would burn—but no regrets, none, just pain.

  She whimpered, her lungs laboring, her right cheek searing as to be burnt through. The heat still stayed, but…she gasped, a cool breath against her lips.

  “Mano meile,” Jericho whispered in a language Jeanne did not know. She kissed Jeanne gently, moving their lips together as if trying to take away some of the scorch.

  Maybe it did, a little, but Jeanne was too far gone, crying out against Jericho’s lips, against the brand of fingers that kept their shape and form but licked like poison.

  Her entire sphere of awareness narrowed violently to the point of white-hot heat and the comfort of icy lips.

  There was no warning, no build—her world simply, suddenly, released into an empty oblivion.

  When Jeanne’s tense, straining muscles collapsed into exhaustion, Jericho removed her hand and lips from the girl’s body as fast as her reflexes would allow. It was necessary, this ritual, but the creature’s face was twisted with remorse.

  “Oh, my little one…”

  A mark had been left behind, to be sure—a thick stripe as wide as a palm and stretching from temple to chin, mutilated silver like quick-healed scar tissue, clumsy and smoldering and hard and dead. A burn that, on anyone else, would have been fatal.