by Coral Walker
“We were at the Charleea tree, up on the hill, overlooking the house. We waved to my mother when she came out from the house to have a stroll with Lizi. Then we had a picnic, we swung, we sang, and we laughed a lot ...” His eyes narrowed. He could see the house again, sitting deep in the Tartton Valley, between the two gentle hills, one on each side.
They had done it many times before. More than once they were interrupted. Putu came and took Cici, no matter how she kicked. Sometimes she returned, by herself, grumpy and tired, lying on the grass for ages. Other times she didn’t.
He could see it again — Cici in Putu’s giant arms, looking small and frail, kicking madly. It was funny about Putu. If not for Lord Shusha’s order, he would be Cici’s giant, so meek and gentle that they could roll him down the hill. Strange that Lord Shusha should demand Cici’s presence so often and each time with such abruptness and urgency. Cici never said a thing about it and would throw a tantrum if he asked.
But yesterday, Putu hadn’t come.
“We had cakes.”
“Yes, we had cakes,” she echoed.
“There was a box of them. I chose one, one of my favourites.”
“You unwrapped it.”
“Yes, I unwrapped it and put it in your mouth.”
“I bit it.” She giggled.
He frowned suddenly, lifting his head. “I ran.”
“Where to?”
“Down the hill. I was so fast; I thought I was faster than the wind, but it was still too late.”
“Too late for what?”
There was a piercing headache splitting his skull in half. He staggered and leaned against the windowsill to keep from falling. A shriek of laughter echoed in his ears, so loud, so irritating. Covering his ears could not blot out the shrieking laughter.
He banged his head against the wall, again and again — he hated the voice.
“Ornardo!” Cici screamed. “Putu, Putu!”
The door swung open, and in strode a giant with broad shoulders. His large hands lifted him up from behind as easily as handling a baby. He was flipped onto the bed.
He felt his body twitching and jerking as if every muscle and bone were rebelling against him. His hands, as if controlled by a different mind, were struggling to take every chance to strike his head, to knock out the wild laughter that was growing louder and louder.
The bokwas. He had seen Lizi being attacked by the bokwas. That was why he was running downhill. He wanted to run faster, faster than the wind ...
Sips of liquid were being forced between his clenched teeth. He spat and refused, but it was no use. As soon as his tongue touched it, the numbness started to spread. The laughter was quenched, and the pressure on his chest from Putu’s large hands was released. There was now only the emptiness left, like in a shell, alone.
+++
The warm blue water sparkled with particles that would seep into his skin and make him magnificently blue. Dilea was watching him closely. She slowed down the washing and stared into his eyes.
“Jack?” she whispered.
Cici, who was with Putu in the far corner, came quickly over. “He is not Jack anymore,” she said in a hushed voice, glaring at the maid scornfully. She leant over him, opened wide a half-closed eyelid and stared into it.
“He won’t wake for a while.” Sighing with relief, she let go of the eyelid and walked back to the corner.
The eyelid reassumed its half-closed position as if by choice.
Why had Dilea called him Jack, and why had Cici said he wasn’t him anymore?
Who was Jack? What did this Jack have to do with him?
There were whispers, coming through the blue water lapping by his ears.
But something more dominant came over him from the top of the skull and spread around it like a net. The net was tightening, smashing into the cells of the brain and connecting them with its thin sticky threads.
“Jack,” it was no longer his mind talking, but something else.
“Jack,” it said again.
Dilea continued washing his legs and arms. She seemed to be enjoying it, rubbing every bit, finger by finger to get the colour perfect.
Cici and Putu were deep in conversation. Cici was resting in a chair, watching the bath as she talked. Fragments of the talk rippled through the air and joined the lapping water.
“Father won’t mind. He is only a slave.”
What were they talking about? How could he be a slave?
“Jack,” the voice came again. It came with a peal of laughter, sending waves around his head.
But he couldn’t feel his head much — everything felt so unreal and so detached.
“Jack, they are talking about Jack,” the voice screeched, and with that, his right arm jerked. Dilea, who was rubbing his right shoulder at the time, got splashed all over. She gave a scream, and Cici and Putu turned.
“I don’t know what happened,” she flustered wiping her face with one of her arms.
He knew he hadn’t moved the arm.
“Me, Jack. I did it,” the voice seemed to know what he was thinking and said things just when they were needed.
“That is my body,” it added.
— Which body?
“The one you are in right now. The one in the blue bath and the one that the maid is bathing.”
But how ridiculous. Wasn't it the body that he woke up in every morning?
“Not every day. I saw you were in a heart-shaped bottle the lady kept in her pocket. I was in that body every day since I was a baby until you took it.”
— How?
“I’m not sure,” the voice answered, “but I guess the lady fed me potions to weaken my body and soul, then in a bath like this, some liquid in the bath kept me off guard, and then she poured you in.”
“I was nearly sucked into the same bottle that kept you, but I managed to escape,” the voice continued.
— Where are you?
“I don’t know. I guess I am in the same place as you are.”
— But I cannot see you.
“I can’t see you either if you mean the soul. But I did see you in the bottle — a thick yellowish liquid, breathing like it had a soul of its own. Of course it had — it was the soul.”
— Why should I believe you?
“Can you feel your right hand now?”
— Let me try. Yes, I can.
“Lift your little finger and just bend the top joint.”
— Why?
“Just do it.”
— I can’t, the top two joints bent together.
“Now relax and look at it. Don't think of anything!”
The little finger lifted slowly and then bent at the top joint with the rest of the finger as straight as a stick. The trick was played again and again.
“My Lady,” Dilea called pointing to the moving finger.
— Could you stop now!
“Now do you believe this is MY BODY?”
— Can you do anything else?
“Not much. Just the little finger and the toes on the right foot. Watch.”
Without warning, the toes on the right foot started wiggling. Although the maid was holding it at the time, while all eyes were puzzling over the moving finger, she didn’t notice until the rhythm of the movement suddenly alerted her. When she looked down at the foot she was holding, her eyes widened, and in a panic she threw the foot into the water with a loud splash.
He would have had a good giggle if the throat and tongue had recovered in time.
Cici and Putu exchanged a worried look.
“I have a plan,” Cici said sternly.
Cici always had a plan.
4
Miracle
Dr Peter Pentland glanced up abruptly at the sound.
The motor started droning. The cylinder rotated slowly upwards until the small boy was in an upright position and then stopped with a quiet click.
His arms sprawling wide, with the transparent support frame merging into the dimness, the bo
y looked like he was standing on his own, except for his tightly shut eyes — a sign of his long induced sleep.
Peter no longer recoiled each time he set eyes on him. After all, he seemed to be happy, well cared for and growing. The cylinder — the Life Sustaining System — was the most advanced of its kind, providing a self-contained and sufficient environment for sustaining life. Fresh air in the cylinder; nutrition-rich liquid in the tube; dreams, entertaining and educational programs transported through the wires to keep his brain active; and hourly rotation to keep him from staying in one position for too long ...
Would he ever wake up?
He frowned at the question in his head. Ever since he had become a scientist, with a mission dedicated to the continuous thriving of life on Earth, he had yearned for an accurate vision, to pass beyond the pitfalls of human perception, and to see things in their real physical form — particles, cells and genes.
But he had seen this boy being born, crawling, wobbling on his small feet and laughing with his first tooth. He wasn’t, after all, a man with a heart of stone.
He still remembered the first time he had set eyes on him — a small odd creature with the most extraordinary skin — silky blue with red patches. The colour of his skin magically changed while he was being bathed, turning into stripes of blue and red as if he had a way of playing with the two different colours he inherited from each of his parents. He was certainly creative in the way he mixed them. As the days went by, they had understood the patterns — blue when he wanted his Dad, red when he wanted his Mum and half of each colour when he was well-balanced and contented, wanting no one.
For Zelda, it hadn’t been an easy ride. She had been confined to bed for the last phase of her pregnancy, the foetus inside her draining her physically as it grew. There had been a grave concern in everyone’s heart — knowing the death of the baby and the mother was the unavoidable outcome of every birth when a Baran and Rionean were the parents.
Their joy was scarcely contained when Bo Goodman had been born healthy. Zelda suffered but lived. She was a strong woman.
His theory had been proved to be correct. It was the air of planet Cygnore that played the main role in bringing about the death of crossbred foetuses and their mothers. By somehow invigorating a tug-of-war between the conflicting parental genomes, it led to the formation of faulty genes, one of which caused the foetus to exhaust the resources of the placenta too soon. It was similar to eating the expectant mother alive.
The air on Earth was much more tolerant towards inter-breeding. It encouraged a co-adaptive behaviour that resolved most conflicting factors. Although some problems still remained, such as the craving of the foetus for sustenance, their scale appeared to be much less. Apparently the air also suppressed some of the faulty genes from being fully expressed.
The birth was a cause for celebration. Born to a Baran father and a Rionean mother and surviving the birth, Bo was the first of his kind. However, there was something even more remarkable.
The small boy in the cylinder, the child of Prince Marcus and Princess Zelda, was carrying a most powerful and unique gene that defined him as the natural ruler of the two kingdoms.
It was fascinating, and still hard to imagine — this small boy, with his changeable colours of blue and red, had blood and flesh full of the magnificent ruling power that if it permeated into the air, would command people with a powerful and mysterious message — Obey, I am your ruler! People of the same race would respond with a docile mind and meek bearing to such a ruler, and all this would happen naturally without a word uttered or duress imposed.
The cylinder rotated again; the room dimmed more, and the boy was now in a prone position. His eyes seemed to have rolled under his shut eyelids.
Was it a protest — wanting another TV clip?
In only another few days he would be living outside that container and breathing unfiltered air in his native environment.
The treatment! How could he start imagining him living outside the container before the ultimate treatment?
“He looks beautiful, doesn’t he?”
The low voice startled him, and he turned. Ms T. Upright was behind him with her thin arms crossed. “You look tired. You should rest, Dr Pentland. Later on Lord Shusha needs you to attend those women in the tower,” she said in a flat tone.
He wondered how long she had been standing behind him. The light was certainly too dim for her to see his face clearly. But then she wasn’t a human like him — an alien who adopted a human appearance still had senses of her own.
“What’s the worry?” she asked,
Peter grinned. It brought back to him the time when he and Kevin Renshell had worked as assistants to Professor Nandalff on the island of Skorpias. Together they had rescued Ms Upright and some of her species from their dying planet. That was before Jack and Brianna had been born, and Prince Marcus and Princess Zelda had first come to the island.
She had been like a small monster then, and he had heard her saying these words when she had first picked up the human language after a speech organ had been permanently implanted in her throat. It was one of the first phrases that she had learned. “What’s the worry?” She would say it and stare at you with a pair of round, childlike eyes.
That’s why they had favoured her, a little alien always asking, “What’s the worry?” Professor Nandalff, especially, looked on her as his child, and had taught her as much as her alien brain could contain.
Compared with her peers she was certainly a smart one — meek, gentle and she always did things right. That’s how she had gained her name — Ms Upright.
It was puzzling when later she had chosen Lord Shusha’s side and shifted her allegiance to him. It must have been on one of the fateful trips to Cygnore that led Professor Nandalff to Tyanna that Ms Upright had met Lord Shusha for the first time. How wily she had been in keeping her secret. He and Kevin were at the island at the time, but neither of them had noticed anything.
Thinking back, it did make sense. She liked powerful but lonely men. She had always been eager to be around the Professor. Professor Nandalff’s absent-mindedness after falling head-over-heels with Tyanna, and his dedication to do whatever she put into his head, must have been a bitter disappointment to her and led her to Lord Shusha, who was arguably the most powerful man in the land of Taron, but as lonely as a wolf.
“You have been staring at the boy for a long time.”
“Have I?”
“When do you think he’ll be ready?”
“Soon,” he muttered, reluctantly.
“Lord Shusha wants a precise date.”
Peter shut his eyes. He was almost there. If the cylinder was turned off now, he was sure the boy would survive. He had observed the mutation — the inactive L-gene had become active, which meant he could live in the native air of Taron. But there were other matters to consider.
“There’s the problem of the incompatibility between the genes of Prince Mapolos and Bo. The problem is more serious than I’d thought. I'm still working on the enzymes. So far progress has been slow.”
“In seven days?”
“That’s too soon. I won’t have time to get the right enzymes, and you know that any genetic incompatibility will have a serious effect on Prince Mapolos — it would kill him.”
“Lord Shusha requested the treatment to be done as soon as possible. The old king is dying.”
“It’s all about making Prince Mapolos the king, isn’t it?”
The air fell suddenly quiet and uncomfortable. He saw Ms Upright recoil in shock at the bold statement and grinned.
“Genes don’t lie,” he continued. “Prince Mapolos is not a legitimate prince, which explains why the Prince’s genes are incompatible with Bo’s. On top of that, even if the treatment is successful, I cannot imagine the Prince will recover quickly enough to be regarded as fit before the old king dies. We need a miracle.”
Mr Upright's eyebrow twitched, and her eyes lit up. “Miracle. Maybe we can
find one here,” she murmured.
Peter stared hard at her.
“Tyanna,” she uttered the name with a shudder. “When Professor Nandalff first set eyes on her, she was performing a healing on a wounded man. ‘Miracle!’ that was what Professor Nandalff called it when he saw how the man was healed.”
“But Tyanna was poisoned and exiled.”
“Someone is becoming just like her.”
“Who?”
“Brianna.”
His heart missed a beat. “How do you know?”
“Bokwas’ whispers. Lord Shusha has ears to hear them. He knows everything with ears like that.”
“A miracle,” she continued, “I shall tell Lord Shusha you need a miracle. I am sure he will sort that out for you. The treatment must take place soon.”
Her glance was fixed on him as she spoke, cold but proud. A sudden weariness overwhelmed him, and he let his shoulders droop.
“I’m leaving now. I’m tired,” he muttered, drawing away his glance to evade the woman’s. Hesitantly he looked one more time at the small body, whose skin colour was now mostly red, before leaving.
“Dr Pentland.”
He slowed down but didn’t bother to face her.
“Just to remind you. Lord Shusha said that in no circumstances should the boy awaken from his sleep before the treatment.”
When the door had shut soundlessly behind him, he let out a long exhalation until his chest was empty and tight. He again met the watchful eyes of Ms Upright, looking out of the window in the door.
He trudged down the long corridor. For a moment, his shadow and his reflection blended on the gleaming floor. He stamped hard on it like a man with a heart burning with emotion.
The corridor was completely deserted. With undecorated walls and the simple lighting, it was like a container.
While the shadow and reflection could come and go according to the lighting, he was trapped.
+++
The wind lifted his cape, fluttered it like a flag and filled Lord Shusha’s ears with whispers — Bokwas’ whispers.
“Brianna is the one. Brianna is the one,” they chanted.
Putu was gibbering with his strange squawking sounds, and gesturing at the same time with his hands. He heard them too.
