The Kingdom

by Jess Rothenberg

  But before she can go on, a recorded announcement comes up over the stadium speakers, reminding the thousands of guests in attendance to please refrain from photographing or recording the finale: the Kingdom works hard to ensure that the secrets of its most popular performances are well guarded.

  “What do you mean?” I ask her. Then: “Where did you go when you were away?”

  But she only shakes her head. “Not now, Ana. I’ll tell you later.”

  I squeeze her hand and ask her again—beg her to tell me, right now—but the music swells suddenly and the lights come up, revealing a stage that’s been transformed, as if by magic, into a fantastical ice palace—at the center of which stands a shimmering crystal throne. Upon the throne, his head adorned with a golden crown, is the polar bear. He rises gracefully onto his hind legs, and then, like the true king of Winter Land, dips into a regal bow, sending the stadium into thunderous applause. Except for me.

  Out of the many thousands present, I am the only one who doesn’t cheer.

  Of the many thousands present, I’m the only one who notices the chains, camouflaged by the ice, rooting the bear in place.

  “I have to leave,” I say to Nia. “I’m not … feeling well. Come with me?”

  But before I can stand, a heavy thud freezes me in place. A woman screams. A boy has snuck out of his seat and is scaling the safety rail between the front row and the stage, clapping and waving to get the bear’s attention.

  “Hey, you! Hey, dumb animal! Over here, you dumb beast!”

  It happens in a second. The nine-hundred-pound Ursus maritimus launches to his feet, snapping his chains effortlessly. In another second, he lunges from his crystal throne, swipes the boy aside, and—growling and snarling—plunges into Thundersnow’s stadium seating, sending a panicked tide of visitors careening for the exits.

  I never see the security teams gathered high above the stadium. They are not meant to be seen; their presence ruins the fantasy. But I do see the spray of bullets, fired with such angled precision that the bear tumbles backward instantly.

  “No!” I try to get up, but Nia grabs hold of me. “It isn’t his fault. He’s frightened!”

  I struggle against her grasp, but Nia’s hands lock and won’t let go. By now the bear is surrounded, bleeding and wild-eyed, his beautiful white coat soaked with blood. He lets out a tremendous roar. Already, a team of armored security guards are moving in, enfolding him in darkness.

  “No.” Nausea slithers from my stomach up into my throat. “Please, no.”

  My little sister holds me as they lift their guns. “Don’t look,” Nia tells me in a firm voice. “Close your eyes, Ana. Think of something happy. Think of something far away.”

  They all fire at once. The sound is so deafening I’m not sure, afterward, whether I only imagined what Nia said next.

  Think of escape.

  16

  POST-TRIAL INTERVIEW

  [00:21:06–00:23:14]

  DR. FOSTER: Are those … prayer beads you’re wearing?

  ANA: They are.

  DR. FOSTER: Where did you get them?

  ANA: A friend.

  DR. FOSTER: A friend?

  ANA: Someone who wrote to me. Someone who believes me.

  DR. FOSTER: You must have received a lot of gifts like that while in detainment over the last sixteen months.

  ANA: Not everybody thinks I’m guilty.

  DR. FOSTER: What makes you say that?

  ANA: I’ve seen the news. People are protesting, aren’t they? There was even a march …

  DR. FOSTER: Some people are protesting. But plenty of others are satisfied.

  ANA: You’re satisfied, you mean.

  DR. FOSTER: You couldn’t be more wrong. Nothing about your situation brings me any pleasure. That’s why I’m giving you the chance to tell the truth. The whole truth. [Silence.] Ana?

  ANA: I’m done talking to you. You’ve hurt me.

  DR. FOSTER: Have I really? Where does it hurt?

  ANA: [Places hand over heart.]

  DR. FOSTER: Interesting.

  ANA: That’s all you’ve got to say?

  DR. FOSTER: What would you like me to say?

  ANA: An apology would be nice.

  DR. FOSTER: Okay. I apologize.

  ANA: You’re lying.

  DR. FOSTER: How can you tell?

  ANA: Because you looked away. You always look away right before you lie.

  DR. FOSTER: You know me well. Just as I know you.

  ANA: You think you know me, but you don’t. You don’t know me at all.

  DR. FOSTER: And what about Owen, Ana? Did he know you?

  ANA: [Pause.] Better than anyone.

  17

  THE SONG OF THE LAGOON

  PART ONE OF THE NIA ORIGIN TRILOGY, BROUGHT TO YOU BY KINGDOMREADS™

  She came, quite literally, out of the blue.

  Swirling black hair, shimmering green eyes, and a face so lovely—like a fairy tale come to life—nobody on land could have resisted her call. “Come with me, little one,” the mermaid whispered. “Come swimming.”

  The child stepped to the edge of the lagoon, arms outstretched, and smiled.

  18

  THE APRIL OF THE CLOUDED LEOPARD

  SEVENTEEN MONTHS BEFORE THE TRIAL

  “You don’t need to come to my show tonight.” Nia flutters her lashes in the mirror, carefully studying her reflection. “I meant to tell you this morning.”

  “Stay still.” Her Beauty Specialist, Dmitri, begins to work on her cheeks.

  My specialist, Fleur, offers me a tissue and I blot my lips, once, twice, three times, leaving behind a crinkled crimson kiss. “Perfect,” she says when she is through, lightly dusting my cheeks with setting powder. “Don’t you think?”

  I smile at my reflection.

  Evening makeup is always more extravagant, but lately, I like it more. It distracts me from the way I really feel.

  I look at Nia. “But it’s Wednesday. I always come to the lagoon on Wednesdays.”

  “I know.” Nia turns back to her vanity too fast for me to read the flicker of emotion in her eyes. “But today, I’d rather you didn’t.”

  I find myself wondering if she is simply trying to be brave. The water flowing in and out of Mermaid Lagoon is so cold the Kingdom will not let warm-water species like loggerheads, reef sharks, and starfish anywhere near it.

  But for Fantasists, it is a different story. Through repeated and frequent exposure, Nia, Kaia, and Zel have had to gradually build up their tolerance to the cold, their bodies working that much harder to stay warm, which the Supervisors maintain enhances overall health, boosts immunity, rejuvenates skin, and improves performance quality—literally shocking my sisters into giving their all for the guests from the second they dive into the water. Even those of us who do not perform as mermaids are required to swim at the lagoon several times a month. Sometimes, even after the Supervisors have reattached Nia’s legs in place of her prosthetic tail, it can take hours for the feeling in her feet to return.

  I watch her for a long moment in the vanity mirror and say nothing.

  Nia must sense she’s upset me, because she reaches over and squeezes my hand. “I love you, Ana. You know that, right?”

  Love?

  A rush of radiant warmth floods my inner circuitry and I stare at her in shock. I have always known Nia appreciates me. We have always talked more than any of our other sisters, shared more. There are things about me that only she knows. But this is a word we say to the guests, not to each other. My head feels dizzy, but delightfully so, as if I have been dancing for hours. Love.

  Can it be? I squeeze her hand back.

  “I … love you, too.”

  And yet, even as I say it, I can feel her slipping away from me, like the afternoon sun starting its descent toward the horizon. I force a smile, wishing it could last. Wishing Nia would talk to me again like old times. Wishing I knew what she’d been about to tell me that day at Winter Land, in
the seconds before the bear attacked. I’m sure it had something to do with her absence. But what?

  When we are fully dressed and made up, gowns shimmering, hair shining, Nia and I head in silence to Magic Land. This time, instead of me accompanying her to the lagoon, we bid farewell at the Story Train, a vintage steam engine that takes guests to Story Land, where they can virtually explore the worlds of their most beloved books, interacting with—and even becoming—their favorite characters. Across the pavilion, at Princess Carousel, the sunlight catches the golden horses as they rise and fall to an organ waltz in a dreamy, infinite loop. The scent of the air from neighboring Sea Land drifts to us on the back of the afternoon breeze.

  Briny and sweet. The smell of the sea, or so they tell us.

  And standing there in the sun, hand in hand with my sister, I’m filled with a new emotion I can’t locate the word for. It’s not quite the same as believing in oneself, like Kaia is always reminding us to do, and it’s not quite the same as always seeing the glass as half-full. This emotion fills up my chest like a breath of fresh spring air. It makes me think anything is possible. Though our Kingdom is far from perfect … everything will still be okay. We will all be okay.

  Happily ever after.

  “Hope,” I blurt out.

  Nia squints at me. “What?”

  I hadn’t meant to speak out loud. Now, I laugh. “Nothing. Just a word I was trying to remember.”

  She laughs, too—head back, eyes closed, louder than I have heard her laugh since before she disappeared; loud enough, even, to rival the rumble of the Story Train—then leans forward to kiss my cheek.

  “Thank you,” she says, green eyes gleaming like the sequins on her dress. “For everything. You’ll always be my favorite.”

  Her words make my chest swell with something new and marvelous. The feeling of skipping. Of singing. Of chasing fireflies through the fields of Magic Land on a warm midsummer’s eve. I start to call to her, to ask her to run with me to the woods, like old times.

  But Nia is already gone.

  * * *

  Later, after the lights, and the sirens, and the screaming have long faded to echoes in my head, I will remember the way Nia squeezed my hand. I will recall how warm her skin felt against mine, like she had sunshine in her veins. I’ll think about the way her voice wavered slightly when she told me that she loved me.

  And I will remember the smell of ash, burning on the horizon.

  19

  TRIAL TRANSCRIPT

  MR. JEFFREY WINDHAM, SECURITY DIRECTOR, KINGDOM CORP.: I’m not sure what you’re insinuating, Ms. Bell, but I’ll tell you as a family man and a decorated military veteran I don’t appreciate it. Safety has always been and will always be my foremost concern.

  MS. BELL: More important than Kingdom Corp.’s status in the hybrid tech industry?

  MR. WINDHAM: I wasn’t hired to worry about our competitors. I was hired to ensure the safe interaction between the Fantasists and our guests.

  MS. BELL: Clearly, you failed.

  MR. HAYES: Objection. What’s the question? She’s badgering the witness.

  THE COURT: Sustained.

  MS. BELL: Excuse me, Your Honor. It won’t happen again. [Pause.] Would you say ethics play into your work, Mr. Windham?

  MR. WINDHAM: Of course.

  MS. BELL: Did it worry you, then, when you realized that the technology you’d had a hand in creating had started to learn from its environment? That it had started to adapt?

  MR. WINDHAM: Not in the slightest. We counted on it. We prepared for it.

  MS. BELL: But you didn’t prepare well enough, did you?

  MR. HAYES: Objection.

  THE COURT: Sustained.

  MS. BELL: Mr. Windham, will you recount for the jury what happened at the Mermaid Lagoon attraction on the afternoon of April 21? In your own words, please.

  20

  THE APRIL OF THE CLOUDED LEOPARD

  SEVENTEEN MONTHS BEFORE THE TRIAL

  I’ve not yet left the Story Train before a mother and her twin teenage daughters stop me to ask the way to see the mermaids. I can tell from the emerald ribbons woven into the girls’ braids that they are especially looking forward to it, and offer to walk them to the Sea Land stadium to show them where to sit for the best view.

  They tell me they’re from the Outer Banks, a faraway place where Mother says all the homes are built up on stilts to avoid being swept into the sea. Mother tells us many things like that—things we would never know from the Internet because of the firewalls.

  “Isn’t it dangerous, living so close to the edge of the world?” I ask when we pass through Sea Land’s famed Mermaid Arch: opposing full-bosomed figures constructed from tempered sea glass and iridescent mother-of-pearl, changing color as they catch the light. “Wouldn’t it be safer to move inland?”

  “What?” the mother says, her face changing in an instant.

  My eyes go wide. Without meaning to, I have broken a cardinal Fantasist rule.

  Never talk to guests about the outside world.

  For a moment, I am so stunned by my stupidity I can hardly speak. Of course, this is not the first mistake I have ever made. I have given guests flawed directions. I have bumbled routine level-one choreography. Once, I even knocked a child’s ice cream cone to the floor, an error that affected me so personally I struggled to swallow my supplements for days and had to be fed my vitamins intravenously.

  But I’ve never made a mistake like this.

  I make a swift correction—increasing our personal distance from three to four feet; opening my posture to suggest friendship and sincerity—but I am too late. The light vanishes from the mother’s eyes. Soon, worry lines begin forming around her mouth.

  I have ruined the fantasy.

  “Come on, girls.” The mother eyes me warily and takes her daughters’ hands. “We’ll find our way from here.”

  A sinking feeling settles over me as they walk away; a scream lodged in my throat I have no choice but to swallow.

  That’s when I see him: the maintenance boy, walking briskly down the path—head down, eyes steady—as if he has somewhere important to be. Owen. In a split second, I decide to follow him.

  And that, ultimately, is the reason the child is not dead: because Owen Chen was working the lagoon that day, and I thought I would get a chance to hear him say my name again.

  Stupid.

  Lucky.

  The sky is cloudy and cool, the air filled with a pungent, sweet scent—earth, mixed with ozone—that tells me a storm is coming. I’m sure Nia is watching the sky and wishing for rain, but since it’s only slightly overcast, they will not cancel the show.

  Sorry, Little Sister.

  The seashell mosaic path winds like a gentle current through all of Sea Land’s best attractions. Owen walks quickly, without once turning around: past Tropical Typhoon, the tallest waterslide in the world; past Riptide, where guests can safely free-dive with hybrid models of the ocean’s fiercest predators—bull sharks, tiger sharks, hammerheads, and great whites; around Shipwreck Cove, a Happily EVR After experience that grants guests the ability to explore some of history’s most infamous shipwrecks—the Mary Rose, the MV Doña Paz, even the RMS Titanic—without ever having to get wet.

  From there, the path curves steeply downhill toward Dolphin Dreams, where children swim and splash alongside baby dolphins; Barnacle Boardwalk, where guests gorge themselves on everything from fried shrimp to funnel cakes; the Tidal Pool, where guests with a penchant for thrill seeking can surf the largest man-made waves in the world; and my favorite, Caribbean Castle, a gorgeous underwater palace where divers of all skill levels are free to dream, explore, and, at scheduled times, interact with the mermaids.

  Owen arrives, at last, at the lagoon. But the crowd is so large that I quickly lose sight of him. I spin around, scanning the jumbled sea of faces: strangers, hundreds of them, red-faced in the heat, sheened with sweat, indistinguishable.

  I kick my foot sharply
into the base of the large statue guarding the lagoon’s entrance—a life-size replica of a colossal squid, its eight great arms wrapped menacingly around the stadium’s sun-bleached pillars—and feel a quick flash of pressure against my toes. Make a correction, my system reminds me when I notice several guests frowning at me as they pass. My cheeks flush and I force myself to smile, though I cannot correct the embarrassment I feel inside.

  “Ana?”

  I spin around, startled to see Owen standing just a couple of feet away, uncoiling a hose; he must have passed through mechanics and circled back around to the entrance. He’s wearing the same khaki maintenance uniform as always, though the warmer weather means he’s traded his long sleeves for short, revealing toned, tanned arms I can’t help noticing as he works.

  He coils the hose in a tight spiral and ducks beneath a tentacle to come stand next to me. For a second, a hundred standard greetings cycle through my head—Welcome to my Kingdom! I’ve been dreaming of you! Where are you traveling from?—but they’re all wrong. There are so many things I could say. So many things I had planned to say, when I finally got the chance. But seeing him like this has caused an unexpected processing delay, as if the words are getting lost on the way from my brain to my mouth.

  “Did you know that squids have three hearts?” he asks, squinting up at the giant statue. “One heart could be injured, or even surgically removed, and the squid would still survive.”

  I glance up, too. Long ago, before the Kingdom’s introduction of Dreamscape™, Dream Land’s late night Happily EVR After experience—before the park extended its hours, when my sisters and I had more free time in the evenings—we used to chase each other around the park after closing, laughing as we climbed up and slid down this very squid’s enormous tentacles, our version of a jungle gym.