Origin

by Jessica Khoury

  As I sit and shiver on the floor of the refrigerator, I can think only of the intense heat of the Ai’oan fires, so much stronger, wilder, and more dangerous than the electric heaters we use in Little Cam. I’d start a fire in here now, but there’s nothing to burn except tissue samples, and they’d hardly last ten minutes.

  I wish we had more open fires in Little Cam, just like I wish we had children. No one talks about them here. If any of the workers or scientists here have them, they never mention them. I guess they probably never had any, or maybe they all grew up and moved away; why else would their parents leave them? I already feel like the world is a little darker without their laughter and nonsense games around me. I envy Eio and his life with the children and wonder how my own life would be different if I had had other kids my age to play with as I grew up.

  But Little Cam is not a place for children. There is nowhere for them to run and play, and anyway, Uncle Paolo says anything that doesn’t contribute to research here is extraneous and unnecessary. He would say that children only get in the way and break things and distract you from your real work. When I was little, I had Uncle Antonio following me everywhere, keeping me out of everyone’s way and making sure I didn’t interrupt important experiments. We spent our time in the social center, mostly. He taught me how to swim, read, add, subtract. I imagine all of the Ai’oan children trying to sit for as long as I did with Uncle Antonio, finding square roots and doing long division. It would be a nightmare. They have more wild energy than I ever had—or maybe I did have it, but without other kids, I never learned how to express it. All I knew was how to be an adult, and not just any adult, but a scientist. Even as young as four I was being trained to take my place on the Immortis team.

  I tell myself that Uncle Paolo must be right. My enchantment with the littlest of the Ai’oans is only me letting my emotions get out of control. And there is nothing so dangerous as the loss of control, Uncle Paolo’s voice echoes in my thoughts, repeating one of his favorite sayings.

  Deep inside, I know I’m really only thinking about all of this in order to keep a different thought at bay: the thought of that dark hallway and the little rooms, the odd chains and scratch marks on the wooden bench. What about the fire? Why would they lie to me?

  And one question chills me more than even the refrigerator I’m trapped in: What are they hiding?

  To stop myself from thinking so much, I start pounding on the door as if I’d been doing so all day. I beat so long and hard against the relentless metal, laced as it is with frost, that I almost begin to believe my own lie. I’m certainly cold enough to be fooled.

  When the door opens, I’m half-frozen and so desperate to get out that my fists keep pumping for several seconds after they’ve wrapped me in blankets. Once I realize that I’m well and truly out and that Uncle Antonio and Mother and Uncle Paolo and Aunt Harriet are all there raining concern down on me, I calm down enough to stammer out my explanation for having been there in the first place. The fake one, of course.

  I’m relieved when they don’t interrogate me further, and I tell myself that the look Uncle Paolo and Mother exchange is nothing more than coincidence. And that the fierceness of Mother’s grip on my shoulder as she escorts me from the room is nothing more than maternal concern for her half-frozen daughter.

  Aunt Harriet never so much as blinks.

  FIFTEEN

  Two days pass. I remain terrified that someone will realize it was all a cover-up, and Aunt Harriet and I will be hauled into Uncle Paolo’s office. But nothing happens outside of the usual routine—excepting the box of matches that I steal from the kitchen when Jacques isn’t looking.

  In the privacy of my room, with my door securely shut, I stand in front of the mirror, pull a match from the box, and strike it. I’m not sure what I’ll see, or if I’ll see anything at all, but since Ai’oa, I can’t get Eio’s words out of my head: “The mark is only seen by fire.”

  I hold the match a few inches from my nose and watch for something to happen.

  Nothing does.

  So I lean closer, until I’m almost nose to nose with my own face, and lift the match higher.

  And I see it, just as the match burns to my fingers. I wouldn’t have noticed the flame on my skin if it hadn’t finally snuffed out. The tips of my fingers are warm, but unmarked by the fire. I strike another match—one, two, three times before it lights—and nearly stick it in my eye, I’m so shaken by what I saw.

  It almost looks like firelight reflecting in my eyes. Almost. But the small flame of the match is still and steady, unlike the shifting bursts of gold and violet in my irises. I’ve never seen them before. Never even suspected. And I’m sure no one else in Little Cam has either. Uncle Paolo has certainly never mentioned the swirling flames. But there they are, tiny lights eddying and blooming against the blue-green of my irises. When I hold the match away, they disappear, but as soon as I bring it back, they’re there again. The colors of elysia, trapped in my eyes, blossoming and circling and fading like fire, like water, like smoke.

  So this is the mark of jaguar, mantis, and moon. The sign of the Ai’oans’ Tapumiri. Hand shaking, I blow out the match and drop it into the wastebasket. For a moment, I stand and stare at myself with my now normal gaze. What other secrets are hidden inside me? I slowly run my hands down the sides of my face, but I don’t know what more I expect to see. Antennae sprouting from my hairline? Scales forming on my cheeks?

  In desperate need of a distraction, I decide to go for a swim, though simply walking from my house to B Dorms, where the pool is, could be categorized as a swim. The rain comes down in blankets, and in minutes I’m completely drenched. I strip off my T-shirt and walk in my bathing suit.

  The pool is deserted, just how I like it.

  I toss my wet tee and shorts on a chair and walk slowly so as not to slip on the tile. The water is blue and still. There is something irresistible about the unbroken, calm waters of a pool. I balance on the edge and relish the anticipation of breaking that serene surface. In the waters below, my own undulating image beckons for me.

  My arms stretch out, my hands meet above my head, and I leap into a curving dive that raises hardly a splash. The water is cool and smooth and swallows me whole.

  I swim several leisurely laps, alternating between easy breaststrokes and floating on my back. The ceiling above is glass, like my bedroom’s, and pebbled with rain.

  I have been so preoccupied with not thinking about the villagers—lest someone see the truth in my eyes—that I haven’t been able to truly reflect on what happened. Now, when I reach for the memory, it comes to me like the remembrance of a dream: hazy, foreign, and impossible.

  Did I really do it? Was I there? Was it real? There is an ache in my heart when I think of the wild, vivacious people. I realize I miss them already. Now that the hole in the fence has been repaired, I doubt I’ll see them again. There are so many questions I want to ask them. How long have they been here, so near Little Cam? What must they think of us scientists? I think back to what Eio said: “Why else would the spirits send an undying one?”

  I grab the edge of the pool and wipe the water from my eyes, feeling a chill that doesn’t come from the water. Have there been others like me?

  And do they still exist?

  The question is new and unexpected, something no one in Little Cam has ever asked before, at least not to my knowledge. Could the people of Ai’oa know more than anyone here has ever suspected? Has anyone ever thought to ask them? After all, this is their land. If anyone were to know the secrets of elysia, wouldn’t it be them? I’m overwhelmed with the questions I want to ask Eio if I see him again.

  Eio.

  The questions suddenly seem less important than the person, and the chill dissolves into an unexpected warmth.

  Eio is nothing like anyone I’ve ever known in Little Cam. He’s my age, for one, but that’s not what makes him different. He’s not quite Ai’oan, and he’s definitely not a member of Little Cam; he
seems more a part of the jungle than anything else. Maybe that’s just my first impression of him coloring my opinion, since I first met him in the rainforest.

  I let go of the edge and float on my back, watching the rain streak the glass overhead, imagining it dripping down the walls into the pool. Me swimming in the same rain that falls on Ai’oa. And on Eio. The boy with nut-brown skin and eyes the color of rain. The boy who showed me the other side of the world. Even now, I can imagine his touch on my skin when we danced and the warmth of his arm under my head as I slept.

  I want to see him again. I need to see him again. I want to see Ai’oa and Luri and the Three and the dances around the fires, but mostly I want to see Eio. To ask him questions, yes, but also to listen to him talk in his beautiful accent. To hear his stories of hunting anacondas and stalking jaguars through the jungle. His life is so different from mine, I doubt I could ever understand him fully. But that only makes my fascination stronger.

  Who is this jungle boy? What is he to me?

  Nothing, a sharp, critical voice hisses from within, surprising me with its virulence. And he must remain nothing. He is a danger. A wild card. An uncontrollable variant. Not for you. Not for you.

  It is my scientist voice, the voice I use when answering Uncle Antonio’s quizzes or when describing what I see through a microscope in the lab. The voice makes me angry, makes me want to stamp my feet like a child, but instead I meekly slide into the water headfirst, like an otter, and sink to rest cross-legged on the bottom.

  Can an immortal drown?

  I don’t find out, because as soon as I run out of breath, I press my feet against the bottom and break the surface, breathing deeply of the moist air.

  Back in my room, I dry off and change into flannel plaid pants and a tank top, then throw myself across the bed and prepare to laze the evening away. Swimming isn’t exhausting—nothing is—but I’m bored with the gym and the lounge and everything else in Little Cam right now. Which isn’t a problem I’ve ever had before. It seems there has always been something to do in Little Cam. One of the things Uncle Paolo is especially careful to avoid is me getting bored. When you have to live forever, it’s not a good sign to grow uninterested in life at only seventeen.

  After confirming that my mother is out of the house, I retrieve my map from under the carpet in the corner and spread it across my bed.

  I am tracing the landmass called Asia with my index finger, memorizing its contours, when I hear a sharp tat.

  Immediately I crumple up the map, not bothering to follow the folding lines, and stuff it under my pillows. Horrified that my secret is out, I look around. No one at the door. Or in the hall. When I call out, no one answers back from the quiet house.

  I go back into my room and have almost decided it was only a nut falling on the roof when I hear another tat. Then tat tat tat. By the second one I’ve pinpointed the noise. It’s coming from the widest of the glass walls.

  When I stand at the window and place my hand on the glass, the next stone hits squarely where my palm is. With a little yelp I leap back and instinctively look at my hand, but of course the pebble bounced off the glass.

  “Eio?” I say incredulously, though there’s no way he can hear me.

  He’s standing on the other side of the fence, and when he sees he’s got my attention, he drops the rest of the stones in his hand. His mouth moves, but I can’t read his lips. I press against the window and shake my head at him, all the while thinking in the back of my mind how glad I am that I changed out of my swimsuit in the closet and not in the bedroom as I sometimes do.

  “What are you doing here?” I mouth slowly, but I can see that he isn’t understanding. My heart fluttering with trepidation that he’ll be seen as well as with excitement that I can see him, I hold up one finger, then both hands with palms toward him, until he nods and stands still. Wait.

  It takes less than a minute to run out the front door, scope the area and find it clear, then navigate around the house to where Eio stands inches from the fence.

  “Don’t touch it!” I cry out softly when I see him move forward. He pulls away at the last second, and I exhale in relief. I have no desire to see him get fried before he can even explain himself.

  “Where have you been, Pia bird?”

  “What are you doing here?” I say at the same time.

  We each wait for the other to go, then both start again simultaneously. After a moment’s confusion, I finally get in, “I couldn’t come back, Eio.”

  “Are you angry with me still?” He looks genuinely concerned.

  “No, of course not. It was my fault anyway, Eio, not yours. I should have come home much earlier. Maybe then they wouldn’t have found the hole.” I point at the recently upturned dirt and misplaced stones around where we stand. “They filled in my way out, Eio. I can’t get escape again.”

  “You must come back!” he insists. “There’s so much I want to show you. Waterfalls and caves and—”

  “Eio…” My heart somersaults with longing, and for a moment, I imagine myself vanishing into the rainforest with him. An uncontrollable variant, my inner scientist warns again. Don’t get carried away. My instincts war with one another. Run. Stay. I stare into Eio’s mortal eyes, and I feel a tug in my stomach, as if a string has been tied to me and is pulling me back toward Little Cam, away from the unknown. “I…I’m not Ai’oan, Eio. My place is here. I’m sorry. I can’t come back with you.”

  He stands back and stares at me for a while. “They’ve tamed you like a monkey. Trained you to fetch nuts and sit on their shoulders, and now you would rather live on a leash than run free through the treetops.”

  “That’s not true! It’s my choice, Eio.”

  “So says the monkey.”

  “Eio!” He’s so infuriating! Can’t he see that more than just a fence divides us? I remember how I lost myself in the Ai’oan dance, those few captivating moments when I felt like I belonged. The sense of forgetting who I was and blending into the crowd was utterly seductive—but the spell was broken the moment my immortality was brought up. “I have no place in your village or in your people’s hopes. I told you. I’m immortal. I belong here.”

  “I don’t care about that,” he responds. “I want you, Pia. You are the first one like me. You belong everywhere and nowhere. Not a scientist, not an Ai’oan. A wild girl. A jungle girl. But still you choose your cage.”

  I bite my lip, resist the urge to bang my head into the fence in conflicted frustration. “Eio, go home. If they see you here they’ll make you leave, and I doubt they’ll do it nicely. Please go.”

  “I can climb these walls and help you out.”

  “You can’t. They’re electrified.”

  He shrugs sullenly.

  With a sigh, I say, “It’s not that I don’t like you or your people. I do. Really, I do. But I can’t get out now. The hole is fixed. There’s no way out.”

  “If you found a way, would you come?”

  “If I found a way,” I promise, wondering why it is that every time he begs, I give in, making promises that tear my reason and my heart in two different directions. What is your fascination with me, boy, that you won’t leave me alone?

  The same fascination I have with him, probably, but I keep that to myself. “Go back now, Eio. Please.”

  He stares into my eyes for a long while, and I wonder what he thinks he’ll find there. Then he turns and melts into the jungle. My heart lurches in my chest as if trying to pull me after him, but the fence is in the way. Always, there’s the fence in the way. I want to grab it and shake it, never mind the electricity, but then the alarm would go off, and Uncle Timothy would start asking questions.…

  When I turn back to the glass house, I feel a raindrop fall down my cheek and onto my lips. It tastes of salt.

  SIXTEEN

  The next day, I’m supposed to be sketching and then diagramming the flowers in the garden between A Labs and B Dorms, but instead, I’m drawing faces. I have an hour to compl
ete the assignment from Uncle Smithy, but it will really only take me fifteen minutes, so I don’t worry about the time.

  First I draw Uncle Antonio, a square-jawed, hairy face that I’ve drawn many times. His beard makes him a favorite model of mine, and I enjoy the tediousness of drawing each tiny, individual hair. I also draw Mother and Uncle Will, but grow bored with their portraits before I finish. I’m not as good an artist as Uncle Smithy, who’s the best in Little Cam. He says my eye for detail is my downfall; I focus too much on each individual aspect of a person and not enough on the whole of a person’s appearance.

  For the fun of it, I turn to a blank page and start sketching randomly, with no certain face in mind. Anything’s better than drawing yet another leaf or orchid, which I could draw from memory anyway.

  My thoughts wander as I draw, until the movements of my pencil become part of the background. I think of Eio standing in the rain outside the fence; it’s been three days now since I last saw him. I think of Aunt Harriet helping me cover up my night in the jungle and how angry Uncle Paolo would be if he found out about it. I think about the locked door in B Labs and the mysterious rooms behind it and wonder what the truth about them might be.

  When I return from my mental walkabout, I look down at my paper and see Eio’s face staring up at me. Shocked, I look over my shoulder to be sure no one’s seen. Then, entranced, I study the product of my wandering thoughts.

  There is more life in this picture than in any I’ve ever drawn. Perhaps I’ve finally discovered what Uncle Smithy calls the “release of tension” and found that artistic groove in which creation is spontaneous and natural. Eio’s eyes are nearly as deep and full of life as they were that night in Ai’oa, and I have the sudden, fantastic notion that it’s him looking out at me and not a picture at all.

  Suddenly I hear voices, and I flip the page over. Uncle Antonio and Aunt Harriet are coming down the covered walkway that links all the buildings in Little Cam together. Aunt Harriet’s arm is looped through Uncle Antonio’s.