Origin

by Jessica Khoury

  “Genetics,” Eio repeats thoughtfully.

  “It’s the study of—”

  “I know what it is. But that’s just a part of what family is, at least in Ai’oa. And it’s a very small part.”

  I open my mouth, shut it again. My brain does a somersault and lands with its fists raised. “It’s everything. My genetic heritage was handpicked, designed by the best scientists in the world—” I stop before I go too far and tell him what I really am.

  Eio gives me a sad smile. “You really are a scientist. Whenever we contradict one of you, that wall comes up in your eyes. We have a word for it in Ai’oa. Akangitá. Head like a rock.”

  My mouth drops. “Head like a rock!”

  I clamp my jaw shut, whirl on my heel, and march off toward Little Cam in a huff.

  At first I hear nothing behind me, and I almost slow and stop, but then I hear Eio hurrying to catch up. I wipe the smile from my face before he sees it. He skips around me and blocks my path.

  “Sorry. If it makes you feel better, everyone in Ai’oa calls me Akangbytu.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He thinks for a moment. “Head full of wind.”

  My indignation, already thin, shatters. I laugh. “Head full of wind! Perfect. How do you say mouth?”

  “You say îuru.” He frowns. “Why?”

  “So if I called you Îurubytu…”

  He gives me a dark look. “Mouth of wind. Ha ha. Îurukay.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I said you speak with fire, Pia bird. Your words scorch.”

  I smile. “Teach me more.”

  As we walk, I name words, and Eio tells me their Ai’oan translation, which I file away in my memory. He is stunned by how quickly I remember things and how easily I string the words together into sentences.

  “It took me years to speak English this well,” he says. “You speak my language as if it were planted in your heart.”

  I smile and wonder if he can see the warmth in my cheeks.

  Suddenly the fence appears, and we’re not far from my escape hole. I see the fallen ceiba only a few dozen yards to the right. The heat melts from my face. I wish I had walked slower.

  “Thank you for walking me back,” I say, because it feels like the right thing to do.

  “Pia…” He looks down at his feet suddenly, seeming almost embarrassed. “I must tell you something. I told you a lie.”

  “You didn’t kill an anaconda after all?”

  “No!” he retorts indignantly. “Îurukay. I did kill the anaconda! I lied when I said you were ugly. It is not true. You…” He scrubs at his hair, and his discomfort makes me smile. “You are in fact very beautiful. More beautiful than any girl I know. Because I lied to you, I must give you a gift. It is the Ai’oan way. I took the truth away from you; now I must give something back.” He extends his hand, and I see he is holding a flower. It’s as big as both of my hands, a lovely pink and purple passionflower.

  I stare at it as my heart tumbles over itself and my tongue turns into stone.

  “Will you come again?” he asks. “In the daytime? You are not like the other scientists, who come and try to bully us, showing off their guns and motorboats.” He snorts. “If it wasn’t for us, your scientists wouldn’t know half of what they know about this jungle. But you are…still young and not so ugly. I can teach you more of my language. And I can show you Ai’oa.”

  I swallow the shard of ice that’s formed in my throat. “I…can’t, Eio.”

  “What are you so afraid of?” He stares at me defiantly, his blue eyes cutting right to my heart.

  I repeat my promise to myself to never leave Little Cam again, but my thoughts get muddled, and all I can think of is the jade jaguar on Eio’s necklace. The words come out of their own accord. “Okay…I will.”

  A slow smile spreads his lips, revealing a row of beautiful white teeth. He nods and turns to Alai, bends from the waist, and says, “Farewell, guardian.”

  Then he is gone, blending into the dappled night like smoke.

  NINE

  The next morning, when I look at the syllabus Uncle Paolo wrote for this week’s studies, I can’t help but smile. Today, instead of the usual routine with Uncle Antonio, I get to work with Uncle Will in the bug room. Then again, I could be scheduled to give the Grouch a bubble bath and I wouldn’t mind. Last night’s adventure—though I’m awed and a little terrified that it happened at all—has left me giddy and lightheaded. It doesn’t feel quite real, and if it weren’t for the passionflower I hid in my nightstand drawer, I might dismiss the memory as a wild, vivid dream. Before leaving my room, I peek at the flower one more time, just to be sure it’s still there. The sight of it sets butterflies loose in my stomach, and I wonder if it’s because it came from the outside—or because Eio gave it to me.

  The entomologist lab is located in A Labs, and there are boards covered with insects all over it. Butterflies, spiders, caterpillars, you name it, Uncle Will has it. The nastier and bigger the bug, the more fond of it Uncle Will is. He’s pretty much the only one, however. Everyone in Little Cam does their best to avoid Uncle Will’s lab. I don’t mind it so much; there’s only one member of his collection that I don’t care for, and I hope it won’t make an appearance in today’s lesson.

  Uncle Will looks up from his microscope as I enter the lab and gives a little smile.

  “Pia,” he says, and that is all. My father is the quietest person in Little Cam. He rarely spends time in the lounge or gym, choosing instead to keep to himself. There are many cliques within the population of the compound, but I’ve never known Uncle Will to be in any of them. He seems to enjoy the company of his bugs more than that of other people. Sometimes I imagine a day when everyone leaves Little Cam to go back to the outside world, leaving all the buildings empty and dark. Except for Uncle Will. I can’t imagine him anywhere except right where he is now, and I think even after the rest of us have left he’ll still be here, pinning beetles to Styrofoam.

  “Uncle Paolo sent me to study with you. Didn’t he tell you?”

  Uncle Will nods absently. He’s already glued his eye back to his microscope. I slide onto a metal stool, its blue cushion cracked and leaking yellow foam, and wait.

  After several minutes, Uncle Will looks up again and smiles. “Pia.”

  “Um…yes?”

  “Today we will study my little pet.” He opens the lid of a terrarium and takes out the most terrifying creature in Little Cam. It’s a beetle larger than my hand, dark, shiny black, and fitted with a ferocious pair of pincers. My heart sinks. So Babó is to be the lesson after all. I’m normally not squeamish, but the sight of this abnormally huge beetle makes my stomach turn. When I was three, Uncle Will gave me a titan beetle, thinking it a perfect pet. It escaped its cage one night, and I found it two days later—under my pillow. They told me years later that my terrified scream reached every ear in Little Cam.

  “Oh…” I shake my head. “Can we just study butterflies? Or ants? Or even worms? Please? Anything but that.”

  Uncle Will looks hurt. “Babó won’t hurt you, Pia. He’s gentle, see?”

  He sets the monster on the metal table beside me, and I automatically lean away from it. It scrabbles across the papers and petri dishes, knocking things over and making a general mess of everything.

  “He looks hungry,” I comment.

  “No, no. Babó doesn’t eat. He’s a male. Male titan beetles don’t eat, they just fly around looking for females to breed with.”

  I know all of that, but Babó is Uncle Will’s favorite subject. My father rarely says more than three words a day, but if you mention the beetle, he can get as talkative as Dr. Klutz. Either we talk about Babó, or I’m in for a very quiet lesson.

  “Charming,” I say.

  “I know, I know!” Uncle Will bobs his head cheerfully, pleased I’ve caught on to the joys that come with titan beetles.

  He starts babbling on about Babó as the grotesquely huge beetle
attempts to climb up the microscope. Uncle Will scoops it up, keeping his fingers well out of the way of its pincers.

  “See how strong he is?” He picks up a pencil and dangles it in front of Babó’s head. The beetle looks far more interested in escaping Uncle Will’s grasp than in the pencil, and I frown dubiously.

  Suddenly Babó snaps his pincers around the pencil, which cracks clean in half. I yelp and leap off the stool, then feel like an idiot as Uncle Will laughs.

  “It broke it in two!” I press myself against a terrarium filled with ants, unwilling to go an inch closer to the beast.

  “You want to hold him?”

  “No!” I rock backward on my heels, and the ant farm behind me sways.

  Uncle Will gives a wordless cry, drops Babó to the floor, and rushes at me. Stupefied, I wonder what’s gotten into him and then realize that the ant farm is about to tip off its stand onto the floor. My father throws himself on it, steadying it until it’s still again. Sweat beads his brow, and I see he is shaking.

  “Uncle Will? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset the ants—”

  “Not just ants, child!” He peers into the terrarium, nearly feverish. “Eciton burchellii. Or they were Eciton burchellii before the experiments.”

  “Experiments?”

  Uncle Will chews his lip. He seems unwilling to talk about it, but I stare pointedly at him, waiting for an answer. Babó has disappeared to the far corner of the room, where I hear him rooting through a pile of discarded Styrofoam.

  “I…have been developing a formula, mainly with Ilex paraguariensis.…”

  “A steroid,” I remark. I see some of the leaves scattered across the table.

  “Yes. Sometimes it has no effect. Sometimes it makes the subjects race in circles until they die from exhaustion. But this time…” His eyes are grim. “This time was different.”

  I look from him to the ants. They are large, but not freakishly big like Babó. The terrarium isn’t filled with sand and dirt like most ant farms; it has leaves and sticks to simulate the rainforest floor. I realize there are many, many more of the insects than I first noticed. What I took for topsoil lining the bottom of the terrarium is actually a living carpet of ants. “Eciton burchellii are army ants,” I say. “Carnivorous, hunting in swarms.”

  He nods. “Just so. But there was a mistake. I cut my finger on a broken vial when I was making the formula. I thought I cleaned it all up, but I found later that a drop had made it into the mixture.” His voices trembles, and he continues hoarsely, “The ants…they have a thirst for human flesh.”

  “What?”

  He clears his throat, but his voice still shakes as he holds up a finger wrapped with cloth. He unwinds the bandage, and I gasp.

  The finger looks as if he dipped it in a jar of acid. The skin is red and mangled, evidence of a hundred tiny jaws at work. “They attacked me. I reached into the terrarium to change their water, and they just…attacked me.”

  Man-eating ants. I’ve read of species of ants that can devour human beings, but never of any that specifically target them. “If they were to escape—”

  “I have prepared for that unlikely event.” He points at a white box on the wall. Inside the box is a wide red lever.

  “The emergency alarm,” I say, recognizing it immediately. There is one in every building in Little Cam, even in the glass house. If pulled, the lever will set off a series of loud alarms all across the compound, signaling everyone to evacuate immediately. As far as I know, the alarms have never been set off.

  “And I have this,” Uncle Will adds. He opens a metal cabinet under the terrarium. It’s filled with cans of aerosol insecticide.

  I tap the side of the terrarium. Instead of scattering, the ants pile on one another, trying to bite through the glass to get at my finger.

  “Let’s hope we never have to use it,” I say. “Why don’t you get rid of them before they break out and eat everyone?”

  Uncle Will retrieves Babó and returns the beetle to its cage. “There’s still so much to learn from them,” he says, a little sheepish. “It’s worth the risk.”

  As he tidies the mess Babó made on the counter, I absently touch a petri dish of water, watching the ripples undulate on the surface. My mind is filled with the memory of last night, particularly with how uncannily blue Eio’s eyes were when I shone my flashlight in his face. Suddenly I’m struck with a thought.

  “Uncle Will?”

  “Hmm?”

  “When was the first time you left Little Cam?”

  His forehead crinkles as he brushes flakes of Styrofoam into a wastebasket. “I guess when I was nine. I went out with Dr. Sato for an hour or two to collect spiders.”

  “Nine! That young?” I sit up straight in indignation.

  “Things…” He stops, his mouth contorting into a wince. “Things were different then.”

  I do my best to quell my irritation at the unfairness of it. I have a different reason for asking the question. “You mean, before the Accident?”

  “Yes.”

  “So have you ever seen any of the people who live in the jungle?”

  “Natives?” He shrugs. “A few times. Why?”

  “What are they like?”

  “They keep to themselves, unless we’re trading.” He frowns. “Wait. I don’t know if Paolo wants me to tell you all this.”

  “Forget Uncle Paolo,” I say. “Tell me more.”

  He shakes his head guardedly. “I think I better not.”

  “Uncle Will—”

  “Pia, please.” His eyes scrunch pleadingly. “Let’s just get on with the lesson, okay?”

  I watch him silently as he sorts several plastic boxes of specimens, wondering if he ever dared sneak out like I did. Would he even tell me if he had? No. He’s too timid, too lost in his world of titan beetles and army ants. I can’t imagine him cheating at checkers, much less sneaking out of Little Cam and into Ai’oa.

  Maybe Uncle Will won’t answer all my questions…but I’m fairly certain now that Eio’s not my brother.

  To my surprise, I realize I’m smiling.

  After my time with Uncle Will is up, I go out and discover that the rain is coming down in sheets, battering the gardens and making the fishpond overflow. A goldfish has been swept out onto the path, where it flops feebly in an inch of water. I dart through the rain and scoop it up, then toss it back into the pond.

  Clarence and Mick are in the courtyard, wearing yellow ponchos and picking up the remnants of last night’s party. Bits of uneaten fruit, napkins, and dropped silverware litter the ground, mixed with leaves and branches blown down by the storm. I bow my head against the rain and hurry past them, glad the task didn’t fall to me. By the time I reach my house, I’m completely soaked.

  After I change and dry my hair, I shut the door and spread out on the floor in front of the glass wall facing the jungle. My head is propped on Alai’s side, and his purring vibrates through me. The few patches of sky I can see are colored charcoal with clouds, and the rain shakes the leaves of the trees as roughly as any wind. Though my wall is partially sheltered by the overhang of the roof, wet trails of water still streak the glass. Through them the world outside seems like the other end of a kaleidoscope, multiplied and magnified in an explosion of green and black and brown.

  A quiet knock at my door reminds me that I didn’t put my dirty laundry out for Aunt Nénine this morning. I open the door and find her standing with a huge, dripping umbrella in one hand.

  “Sorry, Aunt Nénine,” I mutter, racing around my room to pick up everything in need of washing. When I pull my party dress from under the bed, I gape at the mess it’s in. Mud, leaves, and two or three tears are plain evidence of my night out. It hadn’t seemed that bad last night, but then, I was too overwhelmed by what I’d done to really notice.

  It’s too late; Aunt Nénine has seen it.

  “Pia! What have you done to your beautiful dress?” she gasps, taking it from me and inspecting it with dismay. S
he slips her finger through a tear and shakes her head. “I can mend it, but it will take several washes to clean.”

  “I…” My mind is utterly blank.

  “Did you not think, Pia, before running off to the menagerie in this? See what that jaguar’s claws have done?” She clicks her tongue disapprovingly.

  “Oh…of course. The menagerie!” I sag with relief and play it as repentance. “I’m sorry, Aunt Nénine. I guess I didn’t think.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” she sighs as she shuffles out, my laundry in a sack over her arm.

  Once she’s gone and I can relax again, I unfold a section of my map and pore over the Pacific Ocean. My mind devours the names of the islands strewn like Skittles across the blue, but after a while, my thoughts begin to wander.

  I retrieve my passionflower from the drawer in my nightstand, where it’s been floating in a shallow dish of water, and set it beside me on the carpet, studying its intricate structure. Few flowers are as complex as the passionflower, and even fewer are more beautiful. I think of the time I held elysia in my hands and decide that it and this blossom are the two most beautiful I’ve ever seen. The life flower and the passionflower.

  Of course, I can’t look at the flower without thinking of Eio. Of his jade jaguar necklace against his bare chest. Of his jungle-blue eyes.

  I wonder again who his father is. I’ve ruled out Uncle Will. It might not even be an actual scientist; it could be Clarence or Jacques for all I know. I decide I’ll ask Eio next time I see him for a description of his Papi.

  The next time I see him.

  “When did I decide I was even going to see him again, Alai?” The moment I swore I would? Why had I done that? I can’t go back out there. Last night was dangerous enough.…

  What are you so afraid of?

  Uncle Paolo. Mother. Even Uncle Antonio.

  What can they do to you? You, the girl who cannot bleed.

  What would they do? Take away what freedom I have? The thought troubles me. I’ve never really looked that closely at the question before. Just what do I have that they could even withhold?