Children of the Silent Season (Heartbeat of the World Book 1)

by T. Wyse

“Dad, I…” The last of her resolve deflated like a tired balloon.

  “It’s time for a test.” He grinned, flipping the case open crisply. It wasn’t that he ignored her, simply that he hadn’t quite heard her, hadn’t been looking straight at her to see the words formed by her lips. He pivoted the case so she could see the contents.

  This was an old game of theirs, though it had evolved into one that her mother had stopped participating in. In the beginning, so many years ago, it was a game of simple shapes, of basic colours.

  “Can you tell me what this is?” The echo of her mother asked.

  “B…blue…square.” Amelie could still feel the effort needed to link that thing, that flat piece of paper, with the ‘image’ on its surface. The air flowing gently defined the object as a thick board-like thing, nothing more.

  “Very good!” The echo of her father took over, the memory years later. “And do you think this man is sad or happy?”

  “Not a man.” The girl she had been chirped with infantile confusion. The wind only showed her the featureless card.

  “Use your eyes dear.” Her father smiled gently. She could feel that effort again, that squinting focus on the image, to link the picture, and her father’s face, woven in three dimensions by the air gently caressing it. “Is he happy?”

  “That’s right.” Her father’s gentle touch upon her head.

  And in this way she had shakily learned to use her eyes properly, to link the colours and shapes of the world with reality and feeling. The game had continued after that, growing more complicated, more specific, more exotic. The game had also stopped recently, during the first year of the outside school she had fought for and won.

  “Lucas…” A voice sighed from the back of the room, and for a moment her mother’s face leaned out of that funny world of steam and smoke into clarity. “Surely now is not the time. We had the other Matter to discuss.” Her mother’s voice would have been a contrast to her father’s, if it weren’t simply too soft to be a contrast to anything. Amelie had only heard her mother speak in harsh tones indirectly, through the walls of the house, or through distance separating them.

  “Can you tell me what this is?” He nodded, as if not hearing the protests.

  Amelie glanced back meekly at her mother, whose back was once again turned to her. That pit of dread welled up in her stomach. They had been called about the ‘incident’. She rubbed her cheek and was again reassured that the nicks had disappeared, they always did.

  “We have the time.” He assured.

  Her mother sighed again, her face once again disappearing into the covering steam.

  “It’s a knife, smooth surface…” Amelie began quickly, now glad to play the game for the delay.

  “Eyes dear, eyes.” He chided, a tone of impatience creeping in.

  She turned around, scolded, and focused her silly eyes upon the surface of the knife. “It’s a knife, smooth surface, small.” She continued, same as before. “It’s either perfectly preserved or less than one hundred years old. Steel, and European I guess. Western too. “

  “Close, but…” He began, and then stole a quick look at her mother. “Close enough.” He murmured, and closed the case shut.

  He presented three more of the cases, each of them about as humdrum as the first. They were each from a different part of the world, a different period of history between them. She guessed the nature, structure, and location of each of them, and rather than being corrected with the perfect knowledge, she was simply given a pass. With each he asked indirectly: “do you remember these things?” With each he asked “have you learned these lessons?”

  He opened the fifth case, and she had again been studying her mother. She wasn’t extremely upset, but clearly deep in thought, staring at the flag that flapped merrily outside the kitchen window as if it had been the topic of the argument.

  “It’s a sword.” Amelie said, and winced at her mistake immediately as the words fell upon her ears.

  “Eyes dear, eyes.”

  She turned around, biting through annoyance and looked at the thing. “It’s a sword.” She repeated, unamused.

  “Just a sword?”

  “Just…” She looked closer. There was something odd about this one. “It’s…got the blade that gets fat in the middle, completely constructed of metal. The metal is…copper?” Her eyes danced up and down upon the shaft of the blade, greened by being out of its time and place. There was something about the strange glyphic runes on its surface, the way they didn’t brush the air properly, almost as if they simply weren’t there.

  “Hold it, go ahead.” He offered, nudging it towards her. Stealing a glance at her mother, to ensure that she wasn’t bearing some look of horror at the entire thing, she grasped the blade with focused fingers and then carefully cradled it.

  She blew on the runes, but their forms were still fuzzy on the wind, like static.

  “Copper, not quite.” Her father began, his words sort of a swirling dreaminess to them as she focused hard on the sword. “It’s a hybrid of copper, and glass.”

  That shook her slightly. “Isn’t…that impossible?” She broke her gaze on the sword, and met her father’s eyes.

  “Normally yes.” He nodded crisply, and then opened up the second case. More blades of varying sizes and curvature slept in there, all of them covered in intricate runes, and all of them in that static pseudo reality.

  “Amazing pieces that were sent to us in the last year. We only figured out the material was glass this week, and even then we weren’t sure.” He grinned. “And what do you think they were used for?” He slid the second case over to her.

  “There aren’t…many purposes for swords.” She rubbed the glyph with her thumb, still cradling it in her hand.

  “True, true.” He chuckled.

  “Other than fighting, you’ve told me ones that were used for dancing, for religious purposes, ceremonies and stuff. They’re all the same thing though aren’t they? A sword’s just a sword.” She rambled slowly, her eyes trying to reconcile with the wind’s vision.

  “Not an incorrect observation.” He grinned. “You forgot a significant use though, close to ceremony but not quite.”

  “Oh, eating?” It hadn’t ever really come up with the artifacts they tended to savor, but a possibility at least.

  “Close again, but no. Sacrificial. That blade has seen quite a lot of use a long time ago.” The words chilled her strangely. “A chip for a struggling enemy, a lacquered stain for a volunteer, I’d wager it has even tasted a few children in its day.”

  “Ah!” As if encouraged by those words the artifact nicked her between the thumb and finger that had been cradling the upper blade. It was of course the fault of her own hobbled hands, now trembling uncontrollably. She struggled to slowly lower the biting thing back into the protective cloth.

  Even as it sunk back into its case her mother appeared beside her, pressing a tissue against the wound. “Stupid things.” The woman whispered with an irritated hum.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get…” Amelie stuttered. Her father had slipped the case back to himself and looked down at it quizzically. She thought with horror of fresh red stains forming on the blade, its preservation ruined by her clumsiness.

  “Oh, it’ll be fine, it’s not much, not the first time blood’s been on it.” Her father tucked the thing away into its sarcophagus. “You’re alright I take it?”

  “Will be fine.” Her mother withdrew the tissue, and though it was stained red, the wound had become a smart red line, no longer leaking. “Can we stop the game, and eat then?” There was the faintest trace of that harsher voice creeping into her tone.

  “We can.” He placed his plate smack in front of him, a loud clink signaled his resolve.

  She brought the steaming pots of rich and thick stew, seasoned with exotic spices never meant to know one another. The recent weeks had been a meeting of Mexican grains and vegetables, the varied kinds of spiced peppers, with the savory an
d rich tastes of Russian soups and mixed potatoes.

  Neither Victoria nor Amanda had any issue with the food that she ate, It was one of the few places where her friends minds seemed to meet albeit briefly.

  Her parents ate in an uncharacteristic silence that lasted half the meal. Amelie hurried her pace in hopes of avoiding whatever potential storm was coming.

  “Amelie…” It was her mother’s hushed tone that broke the silence finally. She didn’t turn significantly but instead her hand hovered over Amelie’s shoulder, so soft that she could barely feel its presence.

  She knew from the touch that it wasn’t the storm, it was something else. Not a game like the others, but something that had gone on almost as long.

  “How are you today?” The memory of her mother tickled pudgy and unsure feet. The words not quite grasped back then, accentuated with funny inflection.

  “How do you feel today?” Years later, the tone no longer silly, the question serious.

  “I…fine?” The words not quite hers back then, an unsure echo of that sentiment now.

  “Just fine? You know the other words now. How do you feel?” Her mother turned her face finally, bearing a disappointed half frown. “You aren’t happy?”

  “I don’t know.” She choked a little, realizing that the storm had simply come with a whisper rather than a roar.

  “We received a call.” Her mother punctuated this with a soft gesture from her free hand to quiet her father.

  “I thought you both agreed.” Amelie closed her eyes, sinking below the weight of that hand. “I thought he promised that he wouldn’t –“

  “It was from Ellis, not the principal.” Her father chimed in, not quite matching her mother’s tone.

  “We aren’t angry at you, no. He simply said that there was another…incident today. That they have been silent for…many such incidents.” Her mother leaned in, but her finer expression was lost to Amelie’s perception.

  “More than we could have thought when we…” Her father began, but was again silenced by a crisper gesture by her mother.

  “If you are being bullied again—“

  “It’s not bullying.” Amelie tore her eyes open and met her mother’s eyes. Steel on steel, it was enough to give the woman pause.

  “Ma pette, yes it-“

  “No.” She glanced over at her father again, and locked that steel gaze on him now. It was enough that he was at least at full attention. “It’s been explained to me…many times by the principal. I know what bullying is and this isn’t the same.” She drew in a contemplative breath, searching for that conclusion she had reached on one of the dark times in the nook. “It’s…curiosity.” She nodded finally, and closed her eyes again. “Like the scientists coming with their tests, all the tests over and over. Coming to prove I was a liar and failing and then taking a blood sample. Everyone wants proof and when they can’t get it, they want blood. Just not everyone feels like asking. Not everyone brings a needle.”

  There was a chuckle from her father and a tired sigh in response from her mother.

  “It’s not fair to let them get in trouble. They don’t ever come back once I’ve given blood, and today was a fluke. It was somebody brand new, she must have come in mid-term.”

  The words were hers and hers alone, not the warnings or rule mongering of Amanda, nor the grasping venomous fangs of Victoria.

  Her mother leaned back, and allowed her head to bob backwards. Golden strains of perfect hair swayed gently and loosely. “Perhaps she is learning something after all Lucas.” She sighed.

  “Perhaps.” Now he sighed, and after a moment’s hesitation, returned to his stew.

  But that courage still lingered in her chest, and finally she let it loose.

  “Victoria invited me to her family’s cottage, sometime in the summer. I’d like to go.” The words glowed hot from lungs to mouth.

  “No.” Her father made a dismissive wave, blindly cutting into the currents her words had created.

  “Dad, I want to go. I really do.” She leaned in towards him, her breath still hot and clear despite the dismissal.

  “Do you? Somehow I don’t think so.” He looked up but didn’t match her eyes. “It sounds more like her, more like what she wants.” He looked wearily down but had halted eating.

  “He….means to say that we are simply worried about you, worried about you alone in the night.” Her mother’s soft breath lazily wafted over Amelie’s ear.

  “I’ve been away for the night. I’m away in the day.” She growled, stealing a glance at her mother who also refused to meet her eyes.

  “True, but never so far away as this cottage is, so far away from our hands.”

  “You don’t know how far away it is,” Amelie bit.

  “We do.” Her father cut in, his eyes narrow but looking up finally. “Not only is it out of state, out of the mountains, but it’s on a lake. Did Victoria tell you all this by any chance?”

  “No…not about being so far away. How do you know this? You’ve spoken to them?” The lake had never been a secret, but it wasn’t an aspect of the trip she wanted to linger on. The thought of even sleeping near such a thing, of deep and murky water laying mirror flat, untold horrors beneath, and just waiting to suck her down the moment she touched it.

  “We…simply made sure to know, that is all.” Her mother smiled meekly. “We must be sure, you know this, for your own safety. If you are too far, then it could happen again, they could take you and take you far enough that we might not be able to find you.”

  Separation. “Let me talk to them, please!” She begged, mere years ago.

  “Certainly dear, just one more test and I promise you can see your parents, do your best this time, okay?” A lab coat and a vicious smile. A plush toy in one hand, and a syringe to drain her blood in the other.

  Amelie sunk down, looking into the empty plate. Even Victoria’s anger wasn’t worth the risk, the thought of being alone like that again, even the possibility of it was enough to stir the stew in her stomach.

  “Is it…is it Victoria who caused the incident today?”

  “No.” Amelie glared at her mother.

  “Yet she is the…scrappy one is she not?” Her mother searched for a politer term and came somewhat short. “She was there to witness you at the pool as I recall.”

  “Yes.” Amelie winced at the memory, the swimsuit clinging to her like a stinging jellyfish, of being immersed only halfway in water, her feet slipping and then being torn from the air by a current that didn’t exist. She had slammed into the bottom of the pool, and dragged into the deep end before anyone had even noticed something was wrong. Her eyes, forced open by desperation, had stung with the chemicals, stung like her rapidly blackening lungs. She had flailed with all of the might of a newborn against the thick atmosphere, but couldn’t defeat whatever gravity pulled her down so. She had felt her lungs stop, and for that one terrible moment in time she had surrendered to an airless dark.

  It had taken the supervisory adult a desperate twenty minutes to revive her, to bring air back to her lungs. An impossible amount of time and yet she had remained whole except for the scarring memory of the cold, hungry touch of the water.

  “And she surely knows how you feel about such things.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why would she pressure you so to go to such a terrible place?” Her mother’s hand hovered over her shoulder once again. “Is she, are they truly the friends you had hoped to find?”

  “They’re the people who can stand me.” She searched for the reasoning, surely there were reasons. She squashed the doubt as best she could. “They’re easy, they’re clear. They show me what I’m supposed to be like, what I’m supposed to want.”

  “And yet two years later it is clearly not enough, is it?” Her mother sighed. “You need to speak to others, try others out. Perhaps there are others more suited to you.”

  Amelie paused a moment, searching her memories of those on the fringe of her life. Ther
e was a faint familiarity with Victoria’s impossibly large gaggle of friends, but they all bore that look she had come to perceive, that uneasy breathing when speaking to or even looking at her. Tabaka had been the only other face she could think of who regarded her with ease, but she was now long gone.

  “How do you know they aren’t the right people?” Amelie stared down into her plate again.

  “Adele.” Her father scowled, but to Amelie’s shock her mother gave a rare answer.

  “When you are with them as equals, not guides to hold your hand. When everything that separates you melts away while even doing the most mundane of things. When you enjoy the time simply because they are around, that’s what it’s like, that’s what it should be like to have friends.”

  “But it has been many years since we have known anyone in that way I fear. Many years. We have you, ma pette, and to a degree we have Ellis. He is more of a mentor, a teacher, than a friend of course.” Her mother shrugged softly. “Perhaps I am wrong. Surely you will know it for yourself, feel it for yourself when the time comes.” She smiled gently.

  “I am not saying you are wrong, ma pette, merely that perhaps you should not be so narrow in your scope. You have two years more and it would be a shame to simply float through them in a blur.”

  “Adele.” Her father growled now.

  “Yes yes, I shall be silent.” Her mother gave a crisp wave, fluttering behind Amelie’s head. “It is for you to decide, not us.”

  Dig in your heels and stop fluttering. “Uh, did Mr. Ellis tell you about the suspension?”

  “No.” Her father glanced up now, though the anger in his voice was gone.

  “Uhm, it’s until the end of the week.”

  “Been quite a while since that’s happened.” Her father sat still, her mother cocked her head ever so slightly, still eating.

  “He said…well…” Amelie paused, not lacking the memory but searching for the best terms. “He said I should use it to figure out what I want from the school I guess. To figure out if I still want to go.”

  “That…actually reminds me. We’re going east to deliver these artifacts to The Facere Collection. I was going to ask if you wanted to come regardless, but it sounds like just the thing.”