Origin

by Jessica Khoury

  “Did you drink, Pia?” Eio asks again, ignoring the scientists. He grips my wrists so tightly that my fingers start to tingle. Or maybe it’s the elysia; I grip the flower in my hand, and its nectar bleeds onto my skin.

  “I—I don’t know.…”

  “How can you not know? Pia, did you drink?”

  “Don’t shoot,” says Jakob, hands raised. “We’re going. See? Into the boat…”

  They slowly climb in, eyes never wavering from the silent, grim Ai’oans. No one so much as glances at Paolo’s body. I wish they would take it with them.

  “Go,” says Eio. “Don’t ever come back. Don’t ever speak of this place or of what happened here. Most of all, never speak of Pia.”

  “Like anyone would believe us,” Jakob replies. The others look sick, but say nothing.

  After the chugging of the boat motor fades, several warriors go to Paolo’s body and shove it into the river. I can’t watch, and instead I bury my face in Eio’s shoulder. I’m trembling from head to foot and feel tears like drops of fire in my eyes. He strokes my hair and pries open my fingers, letting the elysia fall to the ground.

  “I think…” I lick my lips, which are tingling, and struggle to meet his eyes. “I think I did drink. A little.”

  “Why would you do that?” he whispers, and I realize he’s crying too. His tears are pure, unlike mine. They shed no death. Only release. “What were you thinking?”

  “I couldn’t let him hurt anyone else, not because of me.”

  “Pia, didn’t you think for a minute that I’d come for you?”

  “You were hurt.”

  “That means nothing! Not when you need me!”

  I wait for the convulsions, maybe dizziness, maybe blindness. But nothing happens. Maybe it takes more time? “The noblest life is the one laid down for another, right, Eio?”

  Eio presses me to him, rocking me back and forth. The other Ai’oans stay back, watching with still expressions to see what will happen to me. I listen to the drumming of Eio’s heart, a sound as familiar now as my own breathing.

  “Pia, I came for you. I’ll always come for you, always! I promised Papi! Kapukiri will help. He’ll know what to do. A remedy—” He turns to the warriors. “Go, run and get Kapukiri! Hurry!” They vanish wordlessly, and we’re left alone.

  For several minutes we sit in silence, Eio rocking me as I wait for the elysia to do its work.

  Death.

  Such a strange, foreign concept to me. It has permeated the past few days, but I’ve never felt it so close. So…possible. Not for me. Will it hurt? Will I just slip away? And what will come after that? Shouldn’t I be more afraid?

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  “Why?” he murmurs into my hair. “Why did you do it?”

  “Because I love Ami, and Luri, and Uncle Antonio, and all the rest of them. I love Ai’oa, Eio, just like you do. And…I love you too, Eio. I can say it now, you see? I love you.” The words are as sweet as elysia. “I can’t let the killing go on. No more death, not because of me. This is the only way. You and I both know it. Eio.” He tries to look away, but I reach up and catch his chin so he can’t. “I love you.”

  “And I love you,” he returns. His tears fall onto my cheeks. I taste their salt on my lips.

  Suddenly the world spins sideways and convolutes, and I think, This is it. My body doubles over in a spasm, and I gasp and fall to the ground. I feel Eio beside me, his hands trying to lift me up. I wrap my arms around my torso, but the pain is everywhere. I want to scream, and my mouth opens, but all that comes out is a strangled whimper. My voice retreats, trying to escape the pain.

  I feel like I’m being electrocuted from the inside out, lighting flaying the underside of my skin. It hurts, oh it hurts like nothing I’ve felt before. I’m not on fire—I am fire, raging and hot and uncontrolled. I want to scream, but my voice is frozen by the pain. I want them to throw me into the river or bury me in mud, anything to make the pain stop. I can’t bear it. Blackness rages across my eyes, stealing Eio from my vision, then it turns inward, devouring my heart and my lungs and my mind. I’m sinking into black waters, and I feel the ghostly hands of everyone who ever died because of me reach out to take my soul. My grandparents, Alex and Marian, the countless Ai’oans—they want their blood back. Their revenge is pain, and my flesh pays the price.

  If this is dying, then it is more terrible than I ever imagined.

  I grip Eio’s hands, hard, clinging to him and to everything he represents: Ai’oa, Uncle Antonio, Alai, the jungle, everything I love, everyone I cannot bear to leave behind. He must see my fear in my eyes, because he holds me so close I can hear his heart throbbing in his chest.

  I brace myself for the darkness.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  When I open my eyes, a golden monkey is sitting on my chest and staring straight at me. For a moment, I can’t remember anything at all. My head is completely empty, and when I shut my eyes again, I see nothing but white. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know what happened to me. I’m a blank slate inside. When I reach for the past, I find only empty space, and though I know there must something there, I have the strangest feeling that my life began only today, a minute ago, as if I just popped into existence.

  I can’t even remember my name.

  And then the monkey again. It chatters and grabs my chin, and suddenly it’s gone, whisked away by a small pair of hands.

  Now there is a different pair of eyes. These ones are dark and vibrant, rimmed with long black lashes, and when they look into mine, they grow very wide.

  “She’s awake!” shouts a very high-pitched, very excited voice. The eyes disappear, and I’m left staring at a roof of thatch and leaves, and I realize I’m swaying gently, as if in a cradle.

  There is noise everywhere. It starts soft, then grows louder and louder. Voices. Monkeys. Birdsong. I want to sit up, but my body resists. It’s languid, as if I’ve been floating on water for days. Floating on water…a memory slips into my head and skitters away again. Water, beneath a glass roof.

  More faces. More voices. Many pairs of dark eyes and brown hands. They touch my face and my arms. Who are they? And where am I? I have no memory, none at all. I feel I should be terrified, but instead I have only a vague, permeating sense of content. I lie here, still and quiet, and let them look at me.

  Then the faces disappear, and the voices hush. I sense the people all around me, but none of them are talking. They’re waiting for something.

  Someone new appears. His eyes are different. I stare into them, and I remember suddenly what the color blue looks like. It’s the color of this boy’s eyes. Blue so vivid and so deep, there may as well be no other colors on the spectrum.

  Wait a minute.…I know you.

  He stares, lips slightly parted, breath held. His blue eyes trace every inch of my face. Then, slowly, he starts to smile. It’s a clumsy smile, as if he hasn’t practiced it in a while. A dimple suddenly appears on his chin.

  My mind reaches upward and outward, as if it’s at the bottom of a very deep pool. It swims up, toward light, toward those blue eyes.…It’s a long way, but I’m determined.…Though I lie still, I have the sensation of rising, very quickly and very smoothly, and suddenly—I surface.

  My mouth opens wide as I suck in a deep, long draft of air. Oxygen pours in and inflates my empty lungs, making my chest rise. This is the first breath I’ve taken since opening my eyes.

  “Eio,” I whisper.

  The smile on his face doubles in size. He laughs out loud as he takes my hands in his.

  “Pia! Pia, you’re alive!” His eyes grow watery. “You’re alive.”

  I remember everything. Drinking elysia, Paolo lying dead in the river, me falling into darkness in Eio’s arms. Dying. The memories rush around my head like leaves in the wind, filling the empty spaces inside me and weighing me down to the earth.

  But if I died, why am I here now? Why am I sitting up, being gathered into Eio’s arms? He hugs me
close, his hands on my back and in my hair.

  The legend said the undying ones drank elysia and died. Didn’t it? Why is the memory so hard to find? I feel like I’m trying to sculpt a sphere out of water; the words come together, then fall apart before I can make them stick. It shouldn’t be this way. Everything is always so clear in my mind because my memory is perfect.

  “I feel…strange.” I study my fingers, then press them to my lips, my throat. My strength is returning. I feel it growing like a fire, warm and steady. “I feel warmer, Eio. Stronger. And…lighter.”

  He pulls away and holds me at arm’s length. We’re sitting in a hammock in one of the Ai’oan huts. The villagers surround us in a quiet but smiling ring. Ami stands behind Eio, her tamarin hunched on her head like a living, golden hat.

  “How long has it been?” I ask.

  “It was yesterday,” he replies. “We thought you were dead. You stopped breathing, Pia. Right there in my arms, you stopped breathing. I thought…” His smile fades. “I thought you were lost to me.”

  “We tried to take you from him,” Luri says in Ai’oan, stepping out of the ring behind Ami. “But he wouldn’t let go. For an hour he knelt by the river, holding you and rocking you. We all said you were dead, but still, he wouldn’t let you go.”

  I look back at Eio and shake my head. “So stubborn.”

  “Finally, we forced you from his arms,” Luri goes on. “And he might as well have been dead too, the way he stared at nothing and wouldn’t move.”

  “Then Kapukiri came,” Ami says. “And he heard your heart.”

  “My heart?”

  “It was still beating,” Eio says. His hand lifts, as if he wants to feel my heartbeat for himself, but Luri steps forward and smacks his hand away.

  “None of that,” she snaps at him. “There are children, Farwalker.”

  Eio grins and I feel my face flush red.

  “But how was my heart beating?” I ask. “I wasn’t even breathing.” I search the circle of Ai’oans and finally see Kapukiri. He leans on his staff and stares at me with a slight, almost smug smile.

  “Who knows?” Eio says. “But all that mattered was that it beat. We carried you back here and put you in this hammock and…we waited.”

  “And waited,” Luri snorts. “I’ll have you know, little miss, not a one of us slept last night.”

  “We lit fires and prayed to the gods,” Ami says cheerfully. “All night we prayed.”

  “And here you are,” Eio whispers.

  I don’t know what to think. I don’t know where to even begin.

  “I want to get up,” I say.

  Eio helps me stand, and I stumble a bit. I feel odd. There is something not quite right inside, but I can’t put my finger on it. It’s a little alarming, but for now I just focus on walking.

  “Think we can get away?” I ask him. “All these people staring…”

  He nods, puts his arm around my waist, and leads me toward the jungle. Some of the Ai’oans follow, but he waves them away. I hear more than a few snickers as we leave the village behind.

  “Ignore them,” he says. “You’re alive. Alive, Pia. I thought there was a mistake. That your heartbeat was in my imagination. But Kapukiri heard it too. Even still, I thought…I thought you’d never wake up. That you’d just slip away.”

  “I didn’t,” I say. Still trying to figure that one out.

  I stumble again and grab onto a palm trunk to steady myself. The bark is sharp, and I jerk my hand away with a wince.

  We both see it at the same time and freeze. I hold my index finger up between us and gaze in openmouthed astonishment.

  A single scarlet drop balances on its tip.

  Eio stares for a long minute before managing to whisper, “Pia…you’re bleeding.”

  I nod, unable to speak. My pulse pounds in my temples, relentless as Ai’oan drums. The tiny droplet, so simple, so perfectly red, is the most captivating thing I have ever seen in my life. And the most impossible. And the most wonderful.

  My mind seems stuck in a fog as it tries to make sense of it all. I drank, I know I did. But I’m alive. I feel fine. Except…I’m bleeding. But what about Roosevelt? I thought I was supposed to die.…The answer breaks through like sunlight.

  “He was old,” I whisper.

  “What?” Eio looks panicked. Maybe he thinks I’m dying after all.

  “He was old, Eio. That’s all it was. He was a hundred years old, and those years hit him all at once.” The white hairs on his face and paws—of course. Why didn’t Paolo see it? Why didn’t I see it? Roosevelt didn’t die of elysia. He died of old age.

  And the Kaluakoa?

  We continue walking, and my steps grow stronger. Still, though, there’s something not quite right about the way I feel. It’s almost as if I’m missing something, like a hand or a foot, but all my limbs are intact.

  I think back to that night around the fire and Kapukiri’s deep intonations as he spoke. The legend said that the Kaluakoa’s immortal protectors drank and died like the rest of them…when they had lived the fullness of their years.

  Just like Roosevelt.

  It’s all becoming clearer, as if I’m looking at the truth through a microscope and only now finding the right adjustment of the lens. I have a suspicion I’ve been looking at it for a while now; it’s just been out of focus.

  “They died of old age,” I tell Eio in wonder as the river comes into view. “When they drank, they transformed from their immortal prime to their true age, which is why they died. Or maybe not. Maybe they drank and started aging from that day forward. Maybe they lived sixty, eighty more years.”

  “What?” Eio looks bewildered. “I don’t understand, Pia. Are you…are you dying?”

  “Yes. No. I mean, yes, I died, and no, I’m not dying. Well, I am. I did. It’s both. A circle and a line…” His eyes look ready to pop from his skull. I shake my head, and the fog clears at last. “I mean, I think Immortal Pia died. What’s left is…” Mortal Pia? Someone else entirely?

  Finally Eio starts to catch on. Gently, he scoops water from the river with his palm and wipes the blood away and then entwines my fingers in his, staring at them with wide eyes. “So…you’re saying…that you’re like me now?”

  “I think so,” I whisper in amazement. “I think so.”

  He raises our hands so that his finger can trace my lips. His eyes devour my face as if he were seeing me for the first time. Similarly, I gaze at him, seeing a future I’d never thought possible begin to unfold.

  Since the night Eio first showed me the river, I’ve felt a connection to him, as if we were tied by some invisible string. But at the same time there was always a gap between us that no bridge could span. He was mortal, and I immortal. When he touched me or held me, I felt that one, inescapable difference between us like a cold knife blade. Even when I managed to push it aside and pretend it wasn’t there, even when the electric sensation of just being with him drowned all else out, sooner or later, the truth proved too great. How many times did I let his mortality drive me away?

  But now, everything is changed. Now, when he touches me, I feel nothing but Eio, pure and whole and constant. Now, when I look into his eyes, I don’t see death—but eternity. For the first time in my life, I am looking into someone’s gaze and realizing that not only do I understand what’s in his eyes…he understands what’s in mine.

  The day is brilliant. The sun pours over the river and the leaves, turning everything into white gold. I finally realize what felt so wrong inside me. My senses are dimmer. I can’t hear as much or smell or see like I used to. My muscles feel slow. For the first time in my life, I feel clumsy. At odds with my body. When I reach for my memory, it’s foggy and vague. Certain moments stand out, still in detail, but so many others are lost to me, as if trapped beneath glazed ice.

  And yet…the world is no less bright. The breeze on my skin and in my hair is as soft and cool as it ever was. The birdsong in the trees is as sweet. The smoke-and-p
apaya smell of Eio is as exhilarating as it was before.

  It slowly dawns on me what it is, the sensation that has bridged the gap between how I saw the world yesterday and how I see it today. It compensates for my lost keenness and even makes everything around me a little brighter.

  Hope.

  I reach into my pocket and pull out my necklace. The stone bird dangles between us as I hold it up, and then I give it to Eio. “Ami told me what this means.”

  He looks from the bird to me. “She did?”

  “Apparently, as long as I wear it, I belong to you.” I raise one eyebrow at him. “Sneaky of you, Eio.”

  I turn around and hold my hair up so he can tie it around my neck. Once he’s done and I let my hair fall, he holds my shoulders and puts his lips right beside my ear.

  “I thought I’d lost you when I saw you with that flower,” Eio whispers. “I thought it was all over. I couldn’t live if you died, Pia.”

  “Funny. I was thinking the same thing about you recently.”

  “There’s absolutely nothing funny about it!”

  “I know.” I turn to face him. “I’m sorry.”

  His hair hangs into his eyes, and I brush it away. “Eio, I truly am sorry. About…Uncle Antonio.” My throat thickens, and I blink away tears. “I’d give anything to go back. To stop him.”

  He drops his gaze. “I know. Me too.”

  The image of Uncle Antonio collapsing, his veins flooded with the venom of elysia, is all too clear in my memory. I fear it will never fade, as so much of my past has.

  “He’ll be given an Ai’oan funeral,” Eio says. “He’d like that.”

  I nod, and then the tears come. I press my face into Eio’s shoulder and weep. We sit on the mossy bank, and he holds me while I cry. There are tears in his eyes too. Eyes so like his father’s. I don’t know how long we sit like this. I weep sadness for Uncle Antonio, fury at Mother, relief that Eio is alive, and my own guilt for everything that’s happened.

  “Pia,” Eio finally whispers. He presses his lips to my forehead, where they burn like a brand. “It’s not your fault. Look at me. It’s not your fault.”