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Linkworlds
The world we were linked to was named Cyan, because of its color, blue-green with specks of yellow at the equator. It blotted out almost 60 percent of the blue and yellow sky. It looked like a gigantic curved wall, and it scared me because when I looked straight up part of Cyan was above me, and it felt like it could fall on me even though I knew that was impossible.
If I looked very closely, I could see roads and buildings on Cyan. There was movement in the sky between Allberry and Cyan: 4,000 to 5,000 silver specks—a flock of flying puffer fish, migrating from Allberry to Cyan.
I did not want to live on Cyan, but Father said that passing a family name on to another world was a great thing, and that I should try my very best on the tests so I would be picked to live on Cyan, even though I would never see Father or Mother, or my sister Leela or my brother Hamn, or my uncle or my aunt, ever again.
When we were at the front of the line, an emigration staff member led us into the visitors' hall, which was a big empty room. The empty space made me feel dizzy and sick, so I sat on the floor and put my head between my legs.
The floor was made of shiny clear marble, and there were tiny skeletons of odd plants and animals embedded in it. Mother said I couldn't look at the floor now, maybe later, because they were waiting to give me my test, so I got up and held on to Mother with both hands and pushed my face into her shoulder so I wouldn't see all the empty space, but it still felt bad because I knew the empty space was there.
The testing room was smaller. The tester was a Cyanese woman. She was tall and thin, like she'd been stretched, and her eyes were set at angles instead of being horizontal. She told me to sit in the chair across the desk from her, then she told Mother to wait outside. I screamed when Mother let go of my hand, because I was completely surrounded by empty space, and she told me she'd be right outside, but that wasn't close enough, so when she closed the door I got up from the chair and tried to sit on the tester's lap. But she told me I had to sit in the chair across from her. So I did, but it felt very bad, so I wrapped my arms around myself and hummed the Yellow Bird song.
There was a big glass bowl on the tester's desk, and it was filled with about 2,800 marbles, painted to look like tiny worlds. I couldn't tell exactly how many marbles there were, because I didn't know the size of the bowl, but I recognized some of the worlds they were supposed to look like. I didn't like the way all the worlds were piled on top of each other, because that's not how the worlds are. Worlds have lots of space between them, and they whiz around, and they bounce off the edges of the universe and whiz back toward the middle, or they bounce off other worlds, only worlds don't collide much any more because people steer them with their singing.
"Kypo," I said, pointing to a black marble with a yellow stripe around its middle. I pointed at a green one; the green got darker toward the poles. "Cimsily."
"Yes, that's fine," the tester said. But she wasn't looking to see which marbles I was pointing at, so how did she know it was fine? She was fussing with a box of things behind her that I couldn't see, but I had seen it for a moment when I tried to sit in her lap.
She took out a booklet. "All right, Tweel. The first part of the test is about current events and issues on your world," she said. "What are the names of the six High Council members on Allberry?"
I said I didn't know.
"What is Semple Figsing?"
I said I didn't know.
She went on asking questions, and I went on saying I didn't know, until she put away her booklet and took out a box with 16 holes in the top. She told me that things would pop out of the holes, and I had to touch the blue and green ones, but not the red and yellow ones, before they went back into their holes. I didn't touch many blue and green ones. I saw what color they were very fast, but I have slow fingers.
More boxes and booklets came and went. Then the tester said, "The next part of the test is pattern acuity."
I sat up straighter in the chair. I liked patterns.
She held up a picture of gold-colored leaves connected by straight white lines. There were 37 leaves and 162 lines in the picture.
"Which of the leaves disrupts the pattern?" she asked.
Disrupt meant misbehave, so I pointed to the bad leaf—the one that made me feel a little sick.
She held up another. "And in this one?"
I pointed.
Each picture had more and more leaves in it, which made it easier to find the disruptive leaf. The tester was looking at me now, and she was making an O with her mouth, and I wondered if I had done something that Polite People Don't Do, but all I was doing was pointing at leaves, so I decided that wasn't why she was looking at me. I decided she was looking at me because I was good at patterns.
She took out a new kind of picture, a swirl of nuts and berries and other fruits that looked as if I was looking down on them from above.
"Now, which single object does the pattern most hinge upon?" she asked.
"Hinge upon" sounded like a friendly thing to do, so I pointed at the friendliest one, a barberry toward the top left corner.
When I'd finished a bunch of "hinge upon’s, she came out with pictures of pretty colored stones, and asked, "Which, if removed, would cause the least shift in the existing pattern?" That would be the shyest, if it caused the least shift to the others, so I pointed out the shyest stone in each picture.
The tester stared at me, and I liked that, because the room didn't feel so empty when she stared at me. I still would have preferred to sit in her lap. She called out her instructions quicker and quicker as she went along, and the answers leaped at me before she even asked the questions, and I twisted my head sideways to catch a glimpse of the next picture as the tester was pulling it from the bag. The pictures came quicker; her voice seemed like it was filled with foreign sounds, pops and screeches, and my heart pounded with joy, and the empty space didn't matter any more because I was hugged by the puzzles that came from her bag. I laughed and was very, very happy.
Then, all at once, she stopped pulling pictures from her bag.
"Don't you have any more?" I asked.
The tester turned her palms up. "I'm sorry, that's all."
I cried, because I wanted to do more puzzles, but the tester came around her table and put her arm around my shoulder as she led me to the door, and that helped. And she said, "Tweel, I think you'll soon get to play with more patterns than you've ever dreamed of." And that helped even more, so I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of my shirt and sniffed to stop the dribble from my nose.
When I saw Mother I ran to her and hugged her hard and told her how many leaves were in each picture and how many nuts and berries and fruits and stones and how many marbles were on the tester's desk.
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Father told me that I had scored very high on the test, and that Cyan would let me immigrate, and I would work as an Assistant Navigator. He was very proud, and so was Mother, and my sister Leela, and my brother Hamn, and my uncle and my aunt. I was sad, and scared, and that night I huddled close to my sister Leela and my brother Hamn and cried until I fell asleep with my face pressed against Hamn's damp nightshirt.
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I didn't like the trip to Cyan. A Cyanese man put me in a harness and attached me to a very thick rope along with 47 other people who had been accepted for immigration. Then he turned a crank, and we were lifted into the air, and I was completely surrounded by empty space, and I screamed and hit myself because the pain made the empty space leave me alone. I went up, higher and higher, and the tugging on my harness got lighter, until I was almost floating, and I was still screaming, and it was hard to breathe, and I felt dizzy. Then I felt tugging on my head, and then my body flipped around and I was dropping toward Cyan, and the tugging from Cyan got stronger and stronger until my feet touched the ground.
I screamed and pulled at my harness until a man came and tried to take it off me. It took a long time, because I kept hugging him.
"Tweel! Who is Tweel?" a man shouted while I was still being unhooked. The man had a pointy white beard with a black streak in it, but no hair on his head. He was tall; he looked even more stretched than most Cyanese.
I raised my hands so he would know I was Tweel. He came right over and greeted me, and said his name was Mallowell, and that he was the chief of navigational science on Cyan, and I would be assisting him.
"You're a curious one," he said, while I wiped tears from my cheeks. "You're very good at some things, and very bad at others." He looked into the sky and made a humph sound, then he looked at me again. "Fortunately, all of the things we're responsible for are the things you're very good at!" Then he got very happy and he laughed, and patted me on the head, which I liked.
Cyan was nothing like Allberry. The ground was mostly silver stone instead of red clay, and there was almost no flat land at all; everywhere it was steep ups and steep downs. Steps were carved all over, leading in every direction, crisscrossing each other between buildings made out of the same silver stone and also transparent stone. Blue-green water raced through channels cut in the stone, and sometimes the stairs went over the channels. Because of all the running water, there was a hissing sound in the air that hugged you wherever you went. I liked that. I don't like silence.
Mallowell took me on a tour of my new home, the Science and Propulsion Center, and I stayed close to him, because there was so much open space and not many people. I didn't understand my home. We stopped in a room where people stood on pedestals of different heights and sang different notes while an old wrinkled Cyanese woman hopped around pointing a long forked stick at them. Another room had walls made of the transparent stone, and was filled with water. We didn't go into that room.
When it was time to go to sleep, Mallowell led me to a room that was as big as my whole house on Allberry, and told me it was my room, and showed me where my bed was, and where to store the stick I use to clean my teeth, and my satchel of spare clothing, and my softstone.
Then he left me all alone. As soon as he closed the door I screamed, because I had never been alone before. I heard Mallowell call through the door that there was nothing to be afraid of, that he was just next door.
There was no one at all to look at, only things, and none of the things were even moving, and I felt like I was falling down a deep hole. I ran to the window and looked into the sky so I could see worlds moving, and I recognized one of them, Spin, which I had last seen when I was nine years, 557 days old.
From the west, a giant world drifted into view, blotting out the edge of the sky. Though I had never seen this world in the sky, I knew it was Allberry. Allberry was going away, and my family was going with it, and I might never see them again because worlds rarely link twice.
I watched Allberry as it moved east and shrunk at the same time. I pressed my cheek against the window pane, watching out the edge of the window until Allberry sank out of sight behind the trees to the east. Allberry was pink and red and yellow and orange, and I would watch the sky every day until I saw it pass again, and I would wave to my mother and father and sister Leela and brother Hamn and aunt and uncle.
I changed into my night clothes and went next door to Mallowell's room, and as quiet as I could so I wouldn't wake them, I climbed into bed between Mallowell and his wife, Seery, who I'd met at lunch.
Just as I was drifting off to sleep, the bed jerked, and Seery yelped and jumped out of the bed.
"Tweel? What are you doing?" Mallowell said. "You can't sleep here."
"Why not?" I asked.
"It's just not what people do," he said. I got up and went back to my own room, and got into my own bed and hugged my knees, and I couldn't stop shaking, but I finally fell asleep and then I probably did stop shaking, but I don't know because I was asleep.
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My work place was Mallowell's laboratory. It was filled with big stone pots and circles made of transparent stone, and instruments with strings that might have made music but I didn't think so. There was a big hole scooped out of the ceiling and floor in the middle of the room, forming an open sphere, and in it thousands of marbles like the ones on the tester's desk hung suspended from strings. Light glowed from behind the ceiling and floor, just like the light that glowed in the sky.
"Mhyyrl," I said, pointing to a white marble with grey speckles. "Littleboom. Pellpinnin. Allberry!" I pointed to each one. I liked Mallowell, because he let me stay very close to him.
"Yes, very good!" Mallowell said. "We're not starting from scratch, then."
Then Mallowell started to talk. He called it a lecture. He told me all sorts of things about the worlds. Some of the things I already knew, but most of it I didn't know. I listened so hard I nearly forgot how empty the room was, and my heart pounded so I could hear it in my ears. When Mallowell told me something especially new, sometimes I cried, because it was so beautiful it made me happy and sad at the same time.
He told me the universe is shaped like a giant sphere, and when a world reaches near any edge of the universe, the edge pushes it back, toward the center. And that before people developed propulsion for their worlds, they would bounce off each other, and people would be crushed. That's why there are too many people on most of the worlds now, because no one is getting crushed. Mallowell estimated that Cyan had 60,000 people on it (although he hadn't counted all of them to know this for sure), and that some worlds now had over 100,000.
But the most beautiful thing he told me was that the movement of the worlds makes music that we can't hear, and that the note each world sings as it moves depends on how far it is from the center of the universe. He showed me this on his model, by holding marbles tight so they didn't bob around, then plucking strings of different lengths. The strings made different notes when he plucked them. He said this was how propulsion works: we change the song our world sings by singing along with it, at just the right place, singing just the right songs, and this causes the world to move differently.
Mallowell said he wanted to map all the worlds in the universe, so he could understand it better, and predict how worlds moved in it. Then we would know where all the worlds were likely to be (unless they were using propulsion, which he called error variance) even when we couldn't see them. And best of all, my job was to help him!
"I want you to go outside once a day, always at midday, and draw a picture of where all the worlds are in the sky," he said.
"I can start yesterday," I said.
"Yesterday?" Mallowell said. "Don't you mean tomorrow?"
I shook my head, and picked up a softstone and sheet of parchment from Mallowell's work table, and sketched all the worlds that were in the sky when I looked at them midday yesterday. Then I pointed to the ones I knew and told him their names, and then I told him the worlds I'd seen before, and when I'd seen them.
Mallowell made an O with his mouth, just like the tester had done. He put his hand on my shoulder. "You—" he swallowed. "You can remember every world you've ever seen? And the date you saw them?"
I nodded.
Mallowell hugged me so hard that he squeezed a huff of air out of me. He spun around in a circle, and because he was hugging me I spun in a circle, too. He laughed and laughed, and said I was solid gold and a genius. I told him he was the genius, because he knew a lot more things than me.
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That night I got into my night clothes and waited until some time had passed, then I went down the hall and I wriggled into bed between Mallowell and Seery as quietly as I could.
But Seery still woke up, and huffed, and nudged Mallowell awake. He propped himself up on one elbow and looked at me, and I looked back at him and smiled.
He said "Now, Tweel, we've gone through this once. You can't sleep with us."
"Can I sleep near you?" I asked.
"How near?" he said. I pointed to the floor.
"Would that be acceptable, love?" Mallowell asked Seery.
"You're a lucky man to have me, Mallo," she said.
"I am indeed. Thank you, love."
Mallowell fetched me a big armful of quilts and weaves, and I made a nest at the foot of their bed.
"Till tomorrow, Tweel," Mallowell said, lying back down.
"Till tomorrow," I answered. "Till tomorrow, Seery."
She laughed. "Till tomorrow, Tweel. You'd better not snore."
I don't think I snored, because in the morning Seery didn't say that I did, but I don't know for sure because I was asleep.
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A few days later, while I was making drawings of what worlds were in the sky when I lived on Allberry when I was four years and six days old, Mallowell told me that Cyan was going to link with a world called Ork in two days. Mallowell would meet with Ork's navigational scientists to exchange ideas, and he was going to bring me with him, because I was his assistant.
"Exchanging ideas is far more valuable than exchanging goods or people," Mallowell said later, while we were adding worlds and adjusting locations on his universe map. He was using his lecture voice. "We build on each others' ideas, and they spread. If the world that invented propulsion had not linked with other worlds and exchanged ideas, propulsion would not have spread, and we would still be living in constant fear of collisions.
"I think ideas are like the universe," Mallowell went on. He was holding his wooden angle-measure in one hand, and three marbles—which were new worlds to be added to the map—in the other. "Each thing we know is like a world, spinning about in our heads, and when two things we know collide, they see if they fit together in some interesting way. If they don't, they bounce away; but if they do, they cling together and change each other before bouncing away. And this is how ideas are formed."
I watched the three marbles in his hand, pressing against each other in a clump.
"Why not three?" I asked.
"Three what?"
"Why not three ideas colliding together at once, and seeing if they all fit together in some interesting way?"
"I suppose it could be three. Why not? Or four, or ten."
Mallowell opened his palm and chose one of the marbles, which represented Elto because it was grey on one hemisphere and silver on the other. I made the squeaking sound that I make when things shift in a way I don't like.
Mallowell looked at me. "What?"
"I want them to cling together. They're not done seeing if they fit together in some interesting way."
Mallowell looked at the marbles. They were shiny and smooth; his palm was rough and wrinkled. He looked at me.
"It doesn't have to be three at once. Two ideas can clump together, and then two different, and then the third two, and they will have passed on the same information as if they all three had clumped at once."
I shook my head no. I didn't know how to explain it, but I knew two, two, and two wasn't the same as all three at once. I could picture why in my head. I tried to explain.
"Two-idea links are lines. A three-idea link is a triangle. It's not the same as three straight lines."
Mallowell looked at me, thinking so hard some of the wrinkles on his face scrunched together.
"You're talking about worlds, aren't you? You're suggesting that linking three worlds at once to exchange ideas would advance knowledge faster than if they all linked separately?"
I nodded yes, because that was what I was suggesting. I liked science very much.
Mallowell thought some more, then he said, "Humph," and we went back to work.
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That night I woke up in the deepest dark, and I missed my sister Leela and my brother Hamn very much, so I wiped my eyes on my nightshirt and crept into bed with Seery and Mallowell, taking care to be soft and quiet as a field marm. This time Seery did not wake up, and I fell right to sleep, happy and content.
My plan was to sneak from the bed before Seery and Mallowell woke, but when I opened my eyes, Mallowell was sitting up, looking at me. He laughed.
Seery woke and rolled over. She looked angry.
"It's what he's used to," Mallowell said to Seery. "He doesn't mean anything, you know, untoward, by it. Just until he adjusts?"
Seery looked at me and sighed. I smiled.
"He sleeps to your left, not between us," she said. "And some nights he cannot come to the room until high dark hour."
I nodded happily, though I didn't understand why I had to wait until high dark hour on some nights, or how many nights some nights might be. I hugged Seery, then I hugged Mallowell, then we rose, and I ran to fetch the stick I use to clean my teeth, and my satchel of spare clothing, and my softstone. Now I would sleep much better at night. There would still be too much open space during the day, so I would still shake and cry a lot during the day, but not at night.
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Ork's navigational scientist was hairy and smelled bad, and he didn't care about our map. He only wanted to talk about propulsion. Ork already had 64 propulsion points compared to Cyan's 16. Mallowell asked him where they were in such a hurry to get to, then he laughed. But the Orkian scientist didn't laugh; he only rubbed his hairy chin, which made the muscles in his arm bunch up.
Before we had time to do much talking, the door of the meeting room flew open. It hit the wall and made a loud bang, and I screamed because I was startled. A big, hairy man with arms so thick they wouldn't lie straight at his sides came in. Three fat metal sticks dangled from his belt; they clanked together when he moved. He moved fast. He looked angry, and he was making loud breathing noises through his nose.
"We're leaving," he said to the Orkian navigational scientist without introducing himself. "Gather the rest of the science team and meet me at the bridge." Then he left without saying goodbye or even closing the door behind him.
The Orkian scientist got up from the conference table and ran out the door. He didn't even gather up his note papers first. I looked at Mallowell, and he shrugged.
Later, Mallowell told me why the man, who was the leader of Ork and was named Salyn, had been angry. Salyn wanted to trade a new thing he called "scrip" for Cyan's food and goods. "Scrip" was a piece of paper that said he would do a favor for Cyan later, or help if some other world tried to hurt Cyan. The Oldsters, who were the leaders of Cyan, and who Mallowell was one of, didn't like the idea, and that's why Salyn got angry and left.
I laughed when Mallowell explained what scrip was, because Cyan might not pass Ork again for years.
"Maybe that's why Ork is so interested in propulsion, so they can move more quickly and see the same worlds more often," Mallowell said.
It was an interesting idea.
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When Mallowell suggested linking with more than one world at the same time to the other Oldsters, they didn't think it was a good idea. It would mean clearing a second linking point on Cyan, so people would have to move out of their houses, because their houses would be crushed. The other Oldsters didn't think it would add much, because we could link with as many worlds as we wanted, one at a time.
Mallowell told me this, then he told me he was like a spikefish—once he sunk his teeth into something meaty, he didn't let go.
Two hundred eighty-seven days later, Cyan linked with two worlds at once.
The other worlds were Gurpin and Ettentupan. We navigational scientists from the three worlds had a conference, and there was arguing and lots of people making lectures and asking questions and drawing with softstone. Some of the things that people knew stuck together with what other people knew, and soon everyone was talking about using glass to see things that are very far away, and all the scientists were excited by the time it was over.
The merchants were happy too, because linking with two worlds at once made trading easier.
Fifty-seven days after our three-way link, Mallowell and I were up in the observation tower. Mallowell was experimenting with holding special pieces of glass up to the sky to see far away, and he saw a remarkable thing: three worlds linked together. None of the three worlds were Gurpin or Ettentupan, the worlds we had triple-linked with.
"Your idea is taking flight, Tweel," Mallowell said. He put down the glass and rubbed my hair all around, which I liked. Sometimes Seery did it before we went to sleep.
"Tweel, I think I've spied an unrecorded world! Come take a look," Mallowell said.
I was watching the engineers install the sluices for Cyan's new waterway system. Soon we wouldn't have to empty piss buckets any more, and fresh water would come up to my room instead of me having to go down to get it.
I went over and looked into Mallowell's Longview.
"No, that's Ankari. We saw it once before." I told him when and where.
"Ah," Mallowell said.
I was about to pull my eye away from the Longview when something blotted out the world I was tracking. Just for a moment. Then it happened again. I changed the Longview's focus to short distance.
There were people in the sky!
"There are people in the sky!" I said.
"What?" Mallowell said. "What are you talking about? Let me see."
I let him see. I looked up with my naked eyes, and saw specks in the sky that I knew were people, because I'd just seen them close up.
"What in the universe. . . ," Mallowell said. "My goodness, they're corpses. Thousands of them."
"About 8,000," I said.
"Cyan is plowing right through the middle of them, pulling them out of the sky!" Mallowell shouted at people in the streets to get inside as the specks got bigger and bigger, then the sky was filled with falling dead people. People screamed, and I saw a mother in a window across the way cover her child's eyes with her palm. Mallowell and I stood under an overhang and watched. One of the dead people landed on a spiral roof across the street with a loud thump. It was a lady in a pink dress. She was all cut up. I pushed my face into Mallowell's shirt because I didn't want to see her any more, and he put his arm around my head and led me inside.
Eight days later, we made an emergency-link with a world called Kokoru, because there was smoke coming from a lot of Kokoru's buildings, and they had spread a green signal, which means "help us." I didn't go to Kokoru, and I'm glad I didn't, because there were dead people there, too.
The people who weren't dead said that Salyn had linked with their world without permission, and taken things that didn't belong to him, and his army had killed lots and lots of people, and burned houses and shops.
If that wasn't bad enough, Salyn wasn't just the leader of Ork any more. He had linked seven other worlds with Ork all at once, in a big clump. Houses and people were crushed, because most worlds only have one linking spot cleared, and some of the worlds were squeezed in the middle. The crushing of things, and the killing, sounded very bad, but I thought that worlds squeezed together sounded very good, because if worlds were all hugged up together, and I lived in the middle of the hug, there would be much less open space, and my hands would stop shaking, and I wouldn't cry so much. I cried a lot.
The Oldsters decided that all us scientists should stop what we were doing and focus on what to do about Salyn, in case he ever passed near us again. Mallowell and I stopped working on our map, and tried to find out where Salyn was with the Longview, so we could avoid passing near him. But he must have been far away, because we couldn't find him.
Cyan signed an alliance with 37 other worlds. We linked in clusters of two and three, and used propulsion to keep the clusters close together. Every day, the streets were filled with the thump of people marching in lines. Instead of baking blackcakes and making fabric birds that rode in the sky, everyone practiced killing invaders.
My job was to help Mallowell think of ways to run away from Salyn if he got too close. Propulsion. I wasn't good at propulsion. So I watched Mallowell. He was using our map to test propulsion models with different configurations of worlds linked together.
He tried linking a dozen worlds together in a line, then he set the whole line spinning very fast. I didn't think that was a good idea, because we would all get very dizzy if he tried that with real worlds.
The line of worlds formed a big, blurry circle as it spun, then suddenly the string that was holding it snapped, and it crashed to the bottom of the sphere of the universe and the line burst apart and the worlds bounced all over, then settled together at the lowest point in the sphere.
It scared me, but it wasn't the loud noise that scared me; it was something else that was in the back of my head where I couldn't get to it. I was so scared that my stomach hurt.
I told Mallowell I was sick, and I went to Seery and helped her sort peep nuts. She let me separate them into piles of 222, as long as I also removed the cracked ones while I was doing it, and this helped me not think about the spinning worlds so much, but I still saw them whenever I closed my eyes, so I tried not to close my eyes, but finally it was night and I had to go to sleep, and then I had to close my eyes.
I had a dream that the spinning worlds didn't burst apart when they hit the bottom of the sphere. They just kept going, right through it, and Mallowell shouted, "What, what, what?" and stepped into the map, and he started to sink. His feet disappeared, then his knees, then his waist, until he was only a head. And his head said, "We're taking flight now, little Tweel, where the open spaces go on and on and on." Then his head sank too, and I was alone.
I woke screaming. Seery made a shush-shush-shush sound and rocked me, but I couldn't stop screaming for a long time. The empty space from my dream wouldn't go away; it was in my head, the back of my head felt like it had been opened up, and there was nothing back there but space—black, black space, going on and on.
And while I screamed, I saw a picture in my mind, of the angle that a line of linked, spinning planets would have to be at when it hit the edge of the universe, to break through it. And that made me scream even louder.
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I cried out when I spotted Salyn's world-clump in the Longview. First it was a scared kind of cried out, but it turned into a wanting kind of cried out, because all the planets were hugging each other, and I wanted to climb inside and be hugged by all those planets so I would stop shaking and crying all the time.
It was a giant, lopsided ball, about 150 worlds linked together, rotating slowly end over end. I called Mallowell.
He didn't cry out; he just kept saying, "What, what, what"; and his hand shook when he adjusted the focus on the Longview.
The Oldsters signaled the rest of the alliance about the world-clump, and then the whole alliance ran. I went back to the map with Mallowell, and we figured out speeds and distances and evasive maneuvers as people poured into the streets, shouting and carrying pointed things.
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"There's no way to escape him," Mallowell said while we lay in bed with the lights out. "Nowhere to run." He sounded very sad. Salyn's world-clump would catch up to our alliance in 27 days and four hours.
There was nowhere to run. Nowhere that wasn't terrible; nowhere that wouldn't make me scream forever.
I was sorry Mallowell was sad, but I wanted us to live in Salyn's clump. I wanted Mallowell and Seery and me to huddle in bed with worlds and more worlds hugging us from the sky.
I heard Mallowell sniffle. "My Seery. What will become of us?" he said. I rolled over and put my fingers in my ears, but I could still hear him. "Our beautiful, beautiful Cyan."
He reached over and pushed his face into my neck and cried. I felt the wet from his tears on my neck, and the prickle of his beard.
"You've been a good assistant, Tweel. And a good friend."
Seery put her hand on my head and stroked my hair. She was crying.
I started to cry too, and shake, because I didn't want to tell them. But they let me sleep in their bed, and Mallowell told me science things, and they were sad, and I could stop them from being sad.
But if I did, I would be sad. And I would shake all the time.
I lay awake for a long time, with my heart pounding. Then I woke up Mallowell and Seery, and I told them about the open spaces that go on and on, and about how you get there.
For a long time Mallowell didn't understand what I meant. He kept asking, "Outside what? Outside where?" And I would answer, "Outside the universe." He asked how I could possibly know there was an outside to the universe, and I said, "Because it's a sphere."
________________________________________
I'd never seen Mallowell angry. I was very scared. I pressed my face against Seery's cloak and whispered the Yellow Bird song. I whispered because Rembagh, the man with the twisted stick who always sat in the tall chair in Oldster meetings, thumped his stick on the floor and told me to stop singing it out loud because it was distracting everybody.
"What choice do we have? Tell me! What choice do we have?" Mallowell screamed. His face was as red as the middle section of Gootang, which I'd last seen when it passed Allberry when I was 12 years and 11 days old.
"What you're suggesting is nonsense! Unmatched twaddle! Unbelievable bilge!" a pale-skinned woman from Gurpin said. I knew she was from Gurpin, because all of the alliance representatives wore robes that were the colors of their world, and she was wearing a yellow robe with zigzagged bolts of brown. "There is no outside. By definition there is no outside to the universe. We'll only waste precious time that we need to plan our defense."
"Our defense?" Mallowell said. "There's no defense against that abomination! It's gotten too big. It will eat us. It will eat everything. Our only hope is to go where it cannot follow."
"And where is that? Into your assistant's fantasy world?" the woman from Gurpin said.
"Let's be clear about what you're saying, Mallowell," the representative from Ettentupan said. "You want us to set our worlds spinning and head toward the edge of the universe while Salyn closes in, because your assistant assures you there is an outside of our universe, but he cannot explain why, nor can you?"
"He is an extraordinary boy—"
"Extraordinary?" the woman from Gurpin said. "It was his idea that caused this mess in the first place. Now you want us to trust him again?"
I stuck my fingers in my ears and sang the Yellow Bird song out loud. Seery took me out of the meeting, and I was glad. I don't like it when people are angry with me.
________________________________________
I didn't get dizzy when the line of worlds was spinning; it looked like it was the sky that was spinning. There was Salyn's clump, blotting out 35% of the sky, then it was gone, then it was back again, blotting out 36% of the sky.
I watched from the navigation plateau, which had walls, but no ceiling. Mallowell and Seery pressed against me on either side, but I still felt like I was falling into a deep hole.
When the chief navigator was not shouting directions to the signalers, he was shouting directions to the singers, who were standing on platforms of different sizes and singing into pipes of different circumference that led to Cyan's propulsion chambers. I had told him that the speed and angle had to be just right, or we would bounce off instead of going through. I wondered if he could get it just right. I didn't want him to, I wanted us to bounce off.
"Look!" Seery said, pointing at the sky.
The sky had gotten white and foamy, like the water at the bottom of a waterfall. There was a terrible boinging noise. I closed my eyes and pressed my hands over my ears, but I could still hear it and it made my stomach sick, so I shouted the Yellow Bird song, but that didn't help, and my stomach got worse. Mallowell and Seery were making unhappy sounds too. The boinging slid behind my eyeballs and it felt like it was going to push my eyes out onto the floor of the navigation plateau, and I thought about the woman from Gurpin who said I'd wrecked the universe, and I must have made another mistake, because this was not empty space, it was awful, awful pain.
Then, all of a sudden, it was gone. I opened my eyes.
The sky was huge, and black, and empty. Just like in my dream—empty space that went on and on, with no edges. I started to shake. I slid down between Mallowell and Seery until I reached the floor, then I hugged my knees, and I screamed.
________________________________________
"Ho, Tweel!" a man I didn't know said as I passed him in the great hall. He raised his fists in the air, which is how people on Cyan greeted Oldsters, but now also greeted me, which I liked.
"Hey-o, Tweel, and thank you!" a woman I didn't know said. She raised her fists as well.
A man I did know—Soothin, a singer—put his arm around me and pulled me close. "I'll be your comfort guard on this walk, Tweel. Where are you going?"
"To Mallowell's observation deck," I said as he walked with me. That's what they called it when people walked with me, my comfort guard. It was not as bad as I had thought, the endless black sky, because I had my comfort guard, and I got "ho"s and "hey-o"s from everyone I met. I liked the "ho"s even better than the comfort guard. It was like what I imagined living deep inside the planet clump would be, because the planets would have pressed around me even though they didn't actually touch me. The "ho"s and "goodly-met"s pressed against me the same way, even when there was empty space all around, and I did not shake and cry nearly as much. Maybe one day I would sleep in my own bed. But maybe not; I enjoyed sleeping with Seery and Mallowell.
Mallowell was looking into his Longview when I got to the observation deck.
"Go ahead, little Tweel, look," he said, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and motioning to the Longview.
I didn't want to look at the blackness through Mallowell's Longview. Even though Mallowell was smiling, I did not want to look. There were no planets there, and it had no edges. There was nothing but one glowing white ball that didn't give off enough light to light the black sky that went on forever.
Mallowell said, "Go on, you'll like this."
I looked. The Longview was focused on our universe, our home. I could see inside it, right through the sphere to the planets inside. I could see shadows of worlds—they looked like specks of dust, swirling inside. I wished the Longview was stronger, so I could find Allberry.
"Adjust the Longview seven degrees on the horizontal," Mallowell told me. So I did, and I saw . . .
I saw another universe, another sphere, with planets swirling inside.
"What, what, what?" I said.
Mallowell laughed. "Now five degrees horizontal, three vertical."
I adjusted again, and saw another sphere! It was more distant than the first two. I laughed. It was not so empty out here. That made me feel very happy, very hugged.
"Can we get into these spheres, just as we got out of ours?" Mallowell asked.
"Oh yes," I said. "Getting in would be much easier than out." In my mind, I could already see the angle that would allow us to break into the spheres from the outside.
"Ah. We are explorers then, not refugees," Mallowell said. He looked down at me. "We wanted an assistant navigator, and you ended up changing the universe." Then he reached over and rubbed my hair, which I liked.

Silent Blade
Danis woke up in the middle of the night and lay with her heart pounding, trying to convince herself she had only imagined the sound that had woken her. She had waited for that sound for five years, prepared for it day after day, dreamed of it night after night. Yet now that it had come she didn't know what to do. A part of her wanted just to close her eyes and drift back into sleep. She would never know, then, whether she had really heard it or not . . .
. . . and never feel the knife sliding between her ribs if she had.
With a twist of her body, Danis was out of her hammock and onto the floor, her bare feet light on the cold stone. In the corner, her sister Esta twisted and grunted in her sleep. Her other two sisters lay still as stones in their hammocks near the wall. Danis's day clothes were all the way on their side of the room; after a moment's hesitation, she turned toward the door. Whether she was right or wrong about the sound, she would need no more covering than the short tunic she wore to sleep. She fingered the rat-tooth necklace that hung around her neck, then swallowed hard and forced her feet to move.
Out in the hall, all seemed still. To her right, a cacophony of snores emanated from the room her brothers slept in. To her left, her parents' room was equally still. . . but her parents worked hard and slept soundly, and it took a lot to wake them. Danis listened for a moment and heard nothing—but then, the priests' assassins weren't called the Silent Blades for nothing. Not bothering to tiptoe, she walked into her parents' room.
It felt odd and wrong to see them asleep—two lumps in a bed rather than the authoritative rule-givers she knew. Behind the bed, a dark figure was just straightening. He looked at her, his expression hidden by the darkness.
"Hello, Dani," he said, his voice completely calm.
"Hello, Renn," Danis said to her oldest brother.
Renn smiled—even in the darkness, she could see his teeth flash white. "I'm glad you're here. Were you the one who put that bag of pebbles in the tree?"
"Yes," Danis said.
"How did you know I would climb it?"
"I used to spy on you," Danis said. "You would climb in that way whenever you didn't want Ma and Da to know you was out."
"Sneaky brat!"
Her eyes had adjusted to the light, and she could see now how he had changed. Not very much. . . his shoulders were broader, his chiseled face a bit more filled-out. He looked just like the brother she had worshipped for the first eight years of her life. She had thought his eyes would have changed, but they were the same, direct and merry and ever-so-slightly wild.
Right now there was nothing in those eyes but grudging admiration, and she felt some tension drain out of her body despite herself. "I know what you did when you snuck out, too," she said, even though there was no real reason to. "I even saw your knives."
Renn grimaced slightly. "I underestimated you, didn't I?"
Did he mean then, or now? Danis tensed again. "Ma always forbade you to take lessons from that man. She would never say why."
Renn made a face. "Oh, she said why. She gave a million reasons. It took time from my chores and studies. She was afraid I would get hurt. On and on. None of them was the real reason, of course."
She wouldn't have dared say the real reason. It was supposed to be an honor to have a child chosen to be a Silent Blade, killing at the gods' command. It guaranteed you a high rebirth, especially after he. . .
Danis raised her head suddenly and said, "It almost killed her when you disappeared."
Something flickered in Renn's eyes. Sensing her advantage, Danis added, "You were her favorite. She was always afraid the slavers would take you because you were so handsome."
He didn't react at all, and that clinched it. Danis felt her heart sink. Renn's one fault, even in his adoring younger sister's eyes, had always been his vanity. He had been as proud of his chiseled looks as a peacock was of its feathers. But judging from the expression on his face, his good looks meant nothing to him now. They were irrelevant. . . valueless.
During the initiation, after their final tests, the Silent Blades were said to scar their faces horribly.
"It wasn't slavers who took you, though, was it?" Danis said.
Her brother just looked at her for a moment, then walked around the bed and came toward her. He moved differently—smooth, graceful, his feet making no sound at all. He had never been able to manage that before. In their secret midnight escapades he had always been the clumsy one, stepping on branches, knocking over chairs. Usually the noise hadn't been enough to get them caught, but she would see the look on his face and begin to giggle, and then they would both laugh hard enough to wake up even their parents.
Renn came to a stop in front of her. He was wearing black silk—Danis had only seen silk from a distance before—and the shimmering tunic clung to a body that was muscled as it never had been before. But his eyes were the same, and she felt her fear disintegrate under their steady gaze.
"Come outside, Dani," he said.
Outside. Farther from everyone else sleeping in the house. That would be good. Danis nodded and reached for his hand.
For a moment he seemed startled. Then he smiled, a real smile, and Danis smiled back.
She had forgotten. In all the years of waiting and fearing, she had forgotten how much she loved him. Her brother who shared with her and taught her and protected her. Who didn't make fun of her even when she cried, and hugged her even in front of his friends. Who kept her secrets and took her problems seriously.
He held her hand until they were out in the empty street, a sliver of moon nestling in the black sky just over her house. Then he pulled his hand away, looked her up and down and said, "Gods, you've grown. How old are you now—twelve?"
"Thirteen," Danis said. "Renn—what happened to you?"
There was a moment of heavy silence, and then Renn said, "You know what happened."
He had been eleven when he disappeared. The Silent Blades looked for children between the ages of nine and twelve, old enough to show signs of skill but young enough to be trained. Tales of what those children went through—of how many died during their training period—were whispered even in remote villages like this one. Children who survived the training would be deadly assassins, weapons in the hands of the gods. Skilled in every weapon imaginable, fast and cunning and completely without mercy or remorse. Once initiated they would be scarred so that their faces were barely recognizable, and then they would never wear anything but black silk again.
But before the initiation—and at this point whispers would grow even lower, hardly audible—there was a final test. To ensure not just competence but remorselessness.
"I'm sorry," Danis whispered.
He laughed harshly. "It was my own fault. Ma was right. The old man must have been scouting for them. I thought they were slavers at first. Maybe it would have been better if they had been."
"Was it—terrible?" Danis asked hesitantly.
He shivered. "You have no idea."
Silence. Danis reached up and fingered her necklace again, not knowing what to say. She couldn't come straight out and ask him. The necklace broke, and she looked down with dismay at the strand of teeth in her hand. Her fingers were shaking.
Renn solved her dilemma by looking at her and saying, "You've heard of the final test?"
She dropped her hands to her sides. "Yes. Rumors."
Rumors said that as a final test, before becoming true Silent Blades, the trainees were required to assassinate their families.
"Rumors," Renn repeated, sounding almost giddy. "Well. It's good to know that even they can't control everything. It's supposed to be a deep secret."
"Are you going to do it?" Danis whispered.
He looked up sharply, and she felt something tear through her heart at the pain in his eyes.
"Ah, gods, Dani, how can you ask me that?"
Danis closed her eyes and felt tears squeeze through her lashes. "You're here, aren't you?"
"I have to come here. They don't give you choices, Dani—not until now. Now I have my choice. Now I either succeed or fail."
Danis opened her eyes. The night was slightly blurry. "Did you ever kill anyone, Renn?"
His answering silence was too long. When he finally spoke, he sounded as if he was about to cry. "Please don't ask me questions, Dani."
Her brother. Laughing with her, holding her when she cried. Fighting with her, too, but he was always the first to want to make up afterward.
"You don't know," Renn said. "You don't know what they do to you, if you don't do what they want. Follow orders. Any orders. I know I . . . I know what I've become, Dani, but don't look at me like that. You don't have the right!"
Danis took a deep, shaky breath. "What did they do to you?"
"I'm not going to answer that, little sister. And you don't want to know."
"I do." Danis took a step closer to him. "Is it magic?"
He blinked. "Magic?"
"Do they suck the soul out of you, to make you capable of—"
Renn choked out a laugh before she could finish. "Oh, gods. Not all rumors are true, Dani."
"No magic?"
"No magic. Not even a lot of torture. Just . . . talking. No, not even talking. Just being in a place where everyone thinks a certain way, and before you know it you're thinking that way too. And they're kind, sometimes, when they're not . . ." He broke off and shook his head. "You can't understand unless you've lived through it."
Not a lot of torture, he had said. Danis felt slightly sick.
"How could they get anyone to kill their own family?" she demanded.
Renn smiled sadly. "That part I still don't understand. But what you don't understand, Dani, is that it's going to hurt me not to do it. I'm letting them down, you see. Betraying their trust. It's the most despicable thing a Blade can do, to throw away his final test without even trying."
"More despicable than killing his family?" Danis said in disbelief.
"I know you don't think so. I don't think so. But I feel it. It's like pride or guilt or shame . . . it doesn't matter what you think. It's not what I think that's stopping me. It's what I feel . . . other things I feel. They won't let me do it."
"You climbed into their room," Danis said.
"I thought I had to try. I knew I would fail, but . . . still, I'm glad you came in, Dani. When I saw you, I couldn't even draw my knife."
Was he admitting that he had nearly succeeded? Danis shivered and thought, He's not even my brother anymore. Not the one I knew. But his eyes hadn't changed.
"Danis," Renn said. "Listen. You were always the strongest. You're going to have to kill me."
"What?" she said sharply. "Why?"
"Because that would be an acceptable sort of failure, in their eyes."
"What sort of—"
"Don't argue with me!"
Danis hesitated for a long second, scared by how easily she knew that she could do it. He was the same brother who had cleaned her scrapes and taught her to climb trees.
How could his eyes be the same when he was now a murderer?
"Danis, listen. You have to do as I—"
She felt herself rushing forward, throwing her arms around his neck and burying her face in his chest. The strand of teeth still clutched in her hand must have bit into his neck, but he didn't flinch. After a surprised moment, his arms went around her. She felt the tears tracking down her cheeks, even though she wasn't conscious of crying. Her insides felt dead. She had hugged Renn hundreds of times, but she had never touched silk before.
Then he staggered back and she let go of him. There was a dagger in his hand. She looked at it steadily, then up at him.
His eyes were like chips of stone. Killer's eyes.
After five years as a Blade, if his eyes were the same, it could only be because he was a very good actor. She had known that, much as she had wished it wasn't true.
"Why didn't you just kill me at once?" she asked, surprised at how steady her voice came out.
"There's an order," he said flatly. "Parents first. I had to get you out of the way—" And then he staggered again and reached out to touch the back of his neck, the spot where she had dug the teeth of the necklace in. He smiled.
"I underestimated you again, didn't I?"
Danis just watched him fall to his knees. His eyes never left her face.
"Gods, little sister! You've been wearing a poisoned necklace for the past five years?" He laughed, and it turned into a cough. "But if you think you've saved them, you're wrong."
"What do you mean?" Danis asked, watching him closely.
"You asked how they could make someone kill his own family. Here's part of the answer. If the trainee fails, they come after his family anyhow. Part of his punishment, even if he's dead. And they kill them, painfully."
"I know," Danis said. "The rumors were very complete."
He was turning white. It was a very fast poison. "Then what did you think you'd accomplish? They'll come to get my body and then they'll kill—"
"Unless they have a reason not to," Danis told him. "Unless they need them to stay alive . . . for a future test."
His eyes widened, and for a moment she actually saw horror in them. Then they went blank, and he toppled over onto his face. Danis walked over to his corpse, looked at it for a moment, then knelt and removed the dagger from his hand.
Thirteen was old for a recruit, but not unheard of.
No magic, he had said. That was the important part. She had no defenses against magic. But brainwashing . . . she thought she could stand up to that.
Even though Renn couldn't? a voice in her mind whispered, and her lips tightened.
Yes. She was going into this prepared. Into a culture where assassins trained other assassins, and then relied on feelings like guilt and shame and honor to keep their students in line. To make them obey.
To prevent them, once they were skilled enough, from turning on their trainers.
Give me strength, she prayed, turning the dagger over in her hand. Then she sat cross-legged on the ground next to her brother's body and waited for the Blades to come.

The First Time We Met
Elena eats the same way she makes love: quick and neat. She's curled up in the armchair, sucking on a mango sprinkled with chili powder. Her lips part and a slice of fruit disappears between her teeth. Seconds later, her tongue pops out to lick away the red dust that clings to the corners of her mouth. When Elena eats, she never loses a crumb, never allows the tiniest drop of juice to dribble down her chin.
"Why are you staring at me?" she asks, keeping her eyes on the television. On the news, a boy who looks to be about fifteen years old is showing the reporter his leg, which is bandaged because of a dog bite. The kid, his hair plastered forward so that it hides his forehead and ears, grins into the camera. His face is pitted from acne, so he looks like he has multiple, inflamed dimples on his cheeks. He reminds me of how I was at that age. I can't stand to look at him.
"Hector?" Elena mutes the sound to the television. "Do you have a fever again? I told you to take another aspirin." She's wearing an old pair of pajamas—the pants and top too big for her underweight frame—reminding me of a child dressed in her older sister's hand-me-downs. "You've been on that couch too long," she says. "You need some fresh air." She pulls a small pillow from behind her back and throws it at me. I catch it. It's a blue microfiber pillow, still covered in cat fur even though our cat, Tango, disappeared a year ago. I almost say, "I wonder whatever happened to Tango," but I don't really care. It was her cat more than mine.
________________________________________
The first time Elena and I met, we were both riding the elevator up to a party on the fifth floor of some dormitory. She looked familiar and I assumed we'd met before, so I said, "Are you going to Marcos's place?"
"Yeah," she said. "He's my boyfriend." She was tiny, five feet tall, definitely less than 100 pounds. She didn't even look like a college student with her limp ponytail and round baby face. Marcos was twenty-two, two years older than I was, and a little too old for this girl, or so I thought.
"How old are you?"
"Nineteen." She didn't seem surprised by the question.
"You look a lot younger."
Elena pointed at my forearm where a deep cut was still healing. "What happened to your arm?" she asked.
"Skateboarding," I said. "Landed on a cactus. That was two weeks ago, but I keep splitting it open."
"Let me see it." She moved toward me and took my hand. She leaned her head in close to my arm, so close it made me uncomfortable. But before I could pull away from her, she licked my forearm, her tongue pressing hard against my skin as she dragged it over the wound. Her saliva stung worse than alcohol, worse than the time I burned myself with a cigarette, worse than anything I'd ever felt.
"What are you doing?" I yelled, pushing her back. Her hair came loose from her ponytail.
"Look at it," was all she said.
I glanced down at my arm. The gash, which had been raw and red just a few seconds earlier, was gone. The only trace of the wound was a thin white scar that curved along the muscle.
"You're welcome," she said. She removed her ponytail holder and snapped it around her wrist. Her hair was black and long and coarse, and at that moment, she reminded me of a witch. I stepped away from her, backing myself into a corner. The elevator shuddered to a stop. As the doors opened, she slipped out and hurried down the hallway. I inspected my arm more closely now that she was gone. The pain had subsided, but a drop of spit glistened on my arm. I touched my finger to it and then tapped it against my lips. My mouth tingled.
When I got to Marcos's room, about ten people were standing around, talking, drinking. The music was some old-school Banda group, the beat heavy and intense, the tubas keeping perfect time. I overheard someone ask, "What is this s**t?" Marcos was on his bed, and Elena sat next to him. At six foot three, with huge arms and legs from all the weight-lifting he did, he was a giant next to her. "Hey, primo," he said to me, his Spanglish tinged with an American accent. "¿Qué onda?"
"You're cousins?" Elena asked.
"Hell, yeah," Marcos said, standing up. "We got the same abuelita and everything. Yo, Hector, come with me outside. I need to talk to you, man."
We left Elena on the bed and went into the hallway. "Mira, I gotta break up with that girl," Marcos said. "We were in microbiology together, lab partners. I invited her to some party and we made out and now she thinks I'm her novio."
"And?" I asked. "What? You want me to take her off your hands?"
"Por fas, primito. She's not my type, but you'll like her and she'll like you."
"I already met her on the elevator. She's weird."
"Nah, she's cute," Marcos said. "And nice. So I don't want her feelin' too bad when I dump her."
"Did she do that tongue thing on you?"
"What?" Marcos squinted at me. "Okay, what happened in the elevator?"
I lifted my arm. "My cut," I said. "It's ******** gone. She did that. With her tongue."
"Are you high?" Marcos laughed. "s**t, Hector. Just do me this one favor. C'mon, bro."
When it came to doing favors for Marcos, I didn't feel like I had a choice. My mother had died from diabetes when I was fourteen, and a few years before that my father had run off to Mexico with a younger woman and their baby daughter. At some point in his life, my dad had decided it was okay to trade in a defective wife and son for a newer, better family. I can't say I ever wished him well. But after my mother passed away, Marcos's parents took me in. Marcos watched over me like I imagined a big brother would. He never said no to me. He was never mean to me. So, there was no way I could deny him a favor. I owed him more than my life: I owed him my loyalty.
"Fine," I said. "I'll talk to her. Whatever."
Marcos and I went back to his room where he flirted with some blondie in a mini skirt. Elena watched from the bed, and I felt embarrassed for her. At the same time, I was curious, about whom she was, what she could do. I walked over to her, but before I could speak, she said, "I guess your cousin doesn't like me anymore."
"He's drunk," I replied.
She stood up and rushed from the room, pushing people out of her way. I followed her down the hallway and into the elevator.
"Here we are again," I said.
She hit the button to every floor.
"So what are you?" I asked. "A healer? A curandera or something?"
"I don't know," she said quietly. Her eyes met mine. "Don't tell anyone."
Fourth floor: the elevator door opened and shut.
"You could help a lot of people," I said. "You should be a doctor."
"I'm not into diagnosing and handing out prescriptions. But maybe a nurse. Maybe I could help people that way." She tilted her head and looked at me.
Third floor: a girl crying, the make-up around her eyes smudged. She turned around when she saw us.
"Who else knows about it?" I asked Elena.
"About me studying to be a nurse?"
"No, about what you can do. With your tongue."
Second floor: open and shut.
"Don't make it all sexual now," she said. "Besides, it's my saliva that heals. And other than you, only my roommate and parents know. Okay, and maybe everybody in my hometown. Jesus, I don't even know why I'm telling you this." She closed her eyes, like she wanted to disappear. Her dark lashes fanned out against her cheeks.
First floor: We entered the lobby.
"Want to go get some non-sexual coffee and pie?" I asked.
She smiled then for the first time that night. Her lips were brown and pink, and I wondered if a kiss from her would burn or taste sweet.
________________________________________
"Poor Marcos," Elena says. "I just wanted to party. I mean, I'd been in college for two years and never went to one single party until I met him. I was such a nerd."
"Plus, you looked like you were twelve."
She flips me off.
"See? You even act like you're twelve," I say. I'm lying on the couch, a red fleece throw covering my legs. She leaves the armchair and steps toward me quickly, climbing onto the couch and then straddling my torso between her legs. "I'm definitely full grown," she says. Tonight, her kiss is soft and tender. Benign. So different from when we first met. "I love you." I slide my hand under her pajama top and touch the small of her back.
And then she says again, "Poor Marcos. I can't believe he's in Iraq again." She places her head on my chest and I know she's thinking about all those hundreds and thousands of wounded soldiers and Iraqis that she could be helping, wondering if Marcos will return in one piece or if he'll come back a completely different person, someone more damaged than she is.
"You can't save the world," I say to her because it's the only thing I know is true.
________________________________________
After I walked Elena home that first night, we kissed in front of her dorm room. Her lips were like fire against mine. I forced them apart with my tongue, sliding it against her teeth. My whole mouth was aflame. The pain made my eyes water, but I couldn't stop. It was like eating jalapeños with a meal: at first they're unbearable but after a while nothing tastes right without them.
The door to her room flung open. A chubby girl with light brown hair and penetrating blue eyes stood in the doorway. She wore a long-sleeve sweatshirt and folded her arms tightly across her chest. She eyed me hatefully, her nostrils flaring as she took both of us in.
"Where have you been?" she asked Elena.
"Who is this? Your mother?" I joked.
"I'm her best friend. I was worried about her, okay? Worried some jerk was taking advantage of her."
"Julie," Elena said. "I'm not helpless. I can take care of myself." Without saying good night to me, she turned and walked into her room. The door closed behind her, but I still heard her say, "Oh, Julie. What did you do to yourself?"
I stepped nearer to the door, almost pressing my ear against it. Someone was crying, but it wasn't Elena. Soon, those cries turned into soft moans. My stomach tightened and I wondered whether Elena and Julie were more than just friends or if Elena was working some of her healing powers. I imagined her licking Julie's wounds, and I felt betrayed.
I didn't ask her about it until we'd been going out for a month. She started sleeping over at my place more often and, when she did, she'd be up all night, answering phone calls from Julie, trying to calm her down or promising she'd see her first thing in the morning. Eventually, I started to disconnect my phone whenever Elena came over.
"I'm sorry. She has a lot of problems with her family," she tried to explain. "She's going through something right now. She needs a friend."
"She needs a counselor. Not you."
"Maybe," Elena said. "But when she cuts herself, she's so ashamed about it. I have to help her."
"Why?" I asked. "Why do you always have to be the one there for her?"
Elena's eyes darkened with frustration. "Don't you see? I have this gift. And if I don't use it, then I'm just another freak."
"But you don't have to use it on everyone."
"I don't use it on everyone. I use it on my family and my friends. Julie is my friend. So get over it."
"I'm sorry," I said. "You can do whatever the ******** you want with your gift."
"That's right. It's my gift. It's something I've been dealing with my whole life. If I don't help people, I hurt. I start to burn—and not just my tongue. My whole body, my mind, my skin, it burns." She grimaced. "You can't understand, Hector, so don't ever tell me what I should or shouldn't do."
For the first time, I saw how tired she was. There were circles under her eyes, and she seemed even thinner than before. Elena wasn't like any other person, I reminded myself. And she was right: I could never understand the burden of such a gift. "I'm sorry," I said, meaning it this time. I pulled her close to me, but her body was stiff against mine. We didn't argue about it again, until the next time Julie cut herself too deep.
________________________________________
"I was always jealous of her," I tell Elena. She's sitting on the floor now, and her hair—fifteen years later—is red and short and messy. Her pajama bottoms have disappeared somewhere within the couch cushions. Her legs look smooth in the television's flickering glow.
"I know," Elena answers. "But she's dead now." She pinches her nose as though to stop a sneeze. Her voice is hard when she speaks. "Sometimes I think, maybe I could have helped her."
I pull the throw up to my chin. "Look. Here I am coughing up a lung, and you can't do much for me."
She doesn't say anything, offers no retort. Her shaggy hair has fallen over her eyes, so I can't see what she might be thinking or feeling.
The television is still on and we focus on that instead. The late night show is coming to a close. A band I've never heard of is playing. All five members of the band are bald, even the female lead singer. Her lips, outlined in black, mouth the words, but the sound is still muted so I don't know what she's saying. I've never seen so many young, bald heads—not since the time I went with Elena to the pediatric ward of the county hospital. She made me dress up like Clifford the Big Red Dog. I was a hit—silent, but lovable, waving and hugging all those children, making them forget for a little while how sick they were. The kids who were undergoing chemotherapy or stricken with some sort of autoimmune disorder had no hair, and up close their heads were even smoother, even softer, than a newborn baby's bottom. Not one single strand of hair, not one little bump blemished their innocent scalps. I thanked God that I was wearing a costume because I didn't want the kids to see me cry.
Elena and I had chosen long ago not to have children. And I sure as hell never saw myself as a father, never trusted myself enough to be one. But I was still surprised when she told me she didn't want children either. Now, seeing those kids sick and helpless, I finally understood something: she was a healer, yet if her own children fell ill with cancer or any other incurable disease, she wouldn't be able to save them.
The problem with Elena's gift is its superficiality. She can heal cuts and scrapes, puncture wounds, and blisters. But when it comes to life and death, she's like the rest of us: powerless, afraid, and alone.
________________________________________
One night, during the fall of our senior year, Elena got a call. I could tell from her face that something bad had happened. As soon as she hung up the phone, she asked me to drive her to Julie's place. I drove her there, of course—no questions asked—but waited in the car. After about half an hour, Elena walked out of the apartment with Julie, whose arms were wrapped in dark T-shirts. It wasn't until I opened the car door for them and the cab light came on that I realized those T-shirts were soaked in blood.
We stayed at the hospital until the next morning, even though they wouldn't let us see Julie. Hospital staff told us we'd done the right thing by bringing her in, but they couldn't let her leave for 48 hours. They needed to contact her parents and make sure she wouldn't hurt herself again.
When we got back home, Elena stripped off her clothes and tossed them in the trash. She took a long, hot shower before joining me in the kitchen for breakfast. She didn't say anything as she stirred her coffee, staring at the black liquid swirling around in the cup.
"Do you want a cinnamon roll?" I asked.
"Just half," she said. "God, I can't believe I can still eat."
I cut my cinnamon roll in two pieces and placed my portion on a napkin. I left the remainder on the plate and slid it to her.
"I didn't even try," she whispered.
"What?"
"I didn't even try to help," she said. "When I let myself into her apartment, she was leaning over the kitchen sink, watching the blood drip down the drain. 'I knew you'd come,' she says." Elena took a fork and flaked off icing from the cinnamon roll. "I don't know why, but that pissed me off. Like she controls me or something. Like God put me on this earth just for her. I know she's hurting inside, but that doesn't mean she has to make me suffer too. So I told her, 'I can't help you anymore.'"
"What did she say?"
"She screamed. She just screamed her head off. I'm surprised none of the neighbors called 911. She was waving her arms around, splashing blood on everything." Elena sighed. "I finally got her to let me put pressure on the wounds and try to stop the bleeding. I wrapped the T-shirts around her wrists. The whole time, she's saying to me, 'You ******** c**t. You selfish b***h. You wouldn't care if I died. You could save me right now if you really wanted to.' That's when I decided we needed to get her to the hospital."
"You did the right thing."
"I know," Elena said. "I'm glad it's over, but I just feel so dirty right now. And sick. I don't want to see her anymore."
But I didn't know if she could really stop being Julie's friend. And for a while, I hated Julie for her selfishness. I couldn't understand why she hurt herself. I didn't understand why she wanted to suffer. I'd seen real suffering, watching my mother's health deteriorate, out of her control. My mother had been a large woman, full of strength and vitality, able to pick me up in her arms and swing me around. Sure she had a temper, but she was passionate about everything. She should have lived forever. Instead, I watched her shrink, watched her body unable to heal itself. She lost her eyesight. She lost a leg. She even lost her voice. When she died, I lost everything.
Fortunately for Elena and me, Julie dropped out of school that term and moved back in with her parents. We never saw her again. Every six months, Elena would get an email from her—just one of those generic, mass forwards that don't really mean anything. Each Christmas, we'd receive a glittery greeting card with nothing personal written inside. Then, about five years ago, she and Elena started emailing each other more frequently. Julie had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. As far as I knew, neither one attempted to call the other. Last year the emails stopped. Around the time Tango disappeared, Elena received a letter from Julie's mother confirming what we already knew—that her daughter was dead.
________________________________________
Elena yanks her pajama bottoms from my hands. She puts them on backwards, but I don't say anything. I like it when she's sloppy.
"I feel old, disgusting," she says. "I'm falling apart."
"Yeah, you're thirty-four. Ancient."
"You know what I mean." She points to her tongue. It looks pale and weak, like a drowned earthworm. Most nights, she complains that her mouth is dry, and when we kiss the sting isn't what it used to be, sometimes only a slight tingle against my chapped lips. "Maybe it's this place, making me lose my power. Maybe I've been working too hard." Then she adds, out of the blue, "You want to leave me, don't you?" She's not mad or upset. She says it matter-of-fact, like she's telling me that it might rain.
"I don't know," I say. And that's true. I don't know. I still love her, but when she talks about feeling old, I know what she means. I'm tired of this small-town life. I'm tired of Elena crying over things she can't fix or change. I'm tired that I can't do anything to help her, to ease her sadness. But who am I? I'm just a high school history teacher. No special powers there. And I'm a terrible person. Some days, I hate my students. I hate teaching the same subject, photocopying the same book excerpts and worksheets day after day after term after term in the same old dusty town. So, yeah, maybe once in a while I do think of leaving. Maybe I fantasize about starting over and living a different life. Maybe running away is in my blood. Maybe my father could give me tips on how to make a quick getaway, how to leave in the middle of the night when the person who loves you most in the world is sound asleep, never knowing that in the morning they'll be all alone.
The only problem is this: What would I do without Elena? I'm addicted to her healing saliva, addicted to the pleasure of that searing burn, which allows me to forget for a moment that I'm an orphan, alone in this world, someone without purpose or duty, someone who is easily replaceable, someone who would float away and disappear if the day became too windy.
Now the burn is fading as her power weakens, and I'm scared to live without it. But I'm more scared to live without her. I'm still addicted to her love, to her commitment and support, to the way she looks at me when a student writes me a thank-you note or when I make her dinner after a long day at work. One time, a school bus had rolled over, leaving the children inside bruised and scraped and scared. She was the first person on the scene, the one to give them their first moments of relief. She spit on her fingers and smeared her spittle on their torn skin. That day, she was a hero. She came home exhausted, but when she saw the salmon dinner I'd prepared—her favorite—she cried and cried. I held her. With our faces close together, I tasted her tears, and they tasted of love and desire and gratitude.
"I'm just tired of this place," I finally say to Elena. "It's so isolated and quiet and—"
"And safe," Elena interrupts. "I'm safe here. I don't want to move."
"I don't want you to move either."
"You mean, you don't want me to go with you." She sits back down in the armchair, folding her legs underneath her. She doesn't look like a child to me anymore. She just looks like Elena. She's hunched over like she's bearing the weight of the world on her narrow shoulders. Suddenly, she looks afraid. "Is there another woman?" she asks.
I want to say, "Yes. The ghost of Julie. Yes, my father's new wife and daughter. Yes, my mother. Yes, you and all the rest. I'm haunted by women," but instead I say, "You're not making any sense, Elena. There's no one else."
________________________________________
After Julie dropped out of school, Elena spent her time focusing on me and my problems. At the top of her list was my relationship with my father. A few weeks before Father's Day, she really pushed me hard to get into contact with him.
"There's nothing to fix," I said. "Because there wasn't a relationship to begin with."
But Elena couldn't bear the thought of a son and father being separated. "I just don't think about it," I told her. "He has his life and I have mine."
She called my aunt anyway, who was still alive at the time, and asked her for my father's address. That same day, Elena handed me a slip of paper with a post office box number and name scribbled on it. "Roberto Jimenez Arredondo" was written at the top. Roberto Jimenez Arredondo. My father. Roberto. The name of a true ********.
"Just write him a letter," Elena said.
"I can't write in Spanish, and I don't think he can read English."
"Well, get Marcos to help you."
"All he knows is Spanglish, slang."
"Fine, we'll go to Target and buy him a Father's Day card. They have them in Spanish."
And that's what we did. She chose the card: a simple blue card with a picture of a lighthouse and "Papá" written in gold lettering on the front. Inside, the message said something about how "even across so many miles a father and son are still connected."
I felt stupid buying that card, but I couldn't say no. So I sent it to Mexico, and a few weeks later I received a small, flowery card from my father. Inside, I found a picture of my father at the beach with his wife, an attractive woman with yellow hair, and his daughter, a chubby little girl holding a plastic bucket and toy shovel. On the back of the photo had been written "Roberto, Lorena y Lupita." Lupita, my half-sister, had light brown hair, which was much curlier than mine. She wore a red sundress with green flip-flops and was grinning at the camera. I noticed we shared the same flat nose and wide smile.
"She's cute," Elena said. "What does the card say?"
"I'm not sure. Most of the message is in Spanish and I can't understand it."
"What did your father write?"
"Nothing, just this little part."
Elena took the card from my hands. "Con cariño, tu papi," she read. "With love, your daddy."
"With love." The words stuck in my throat. "Con cariño, tu papi." I shoved the card back into the envelope. "She wrote it," I said. "His girlfriend, wife, whatever. She felt sorry for me and wrote out the note."
"Maybe he couldn't write it," Elena said, "but that doesn't mean the sentiment isn't true. You're his only son, of course he thinks about you. Write him another letter and watch. He'll write you—"
"Just stop it," I said. "Stop trying to fix a part of my life that no longer exists."
I folded the card back into the envelope and dropped it into the trash.
"I get too much mail anyway," I said, trying to lighten the mood. "Junk mail, bills, letters from Marcos, letters from my aunt and uncle, cards for Christmas, Thanksgiving, my birthday, my baptismal anniversary."
Elena smiled. "What? You were baptized? I don't believe it." She kissed me, sticking her tongue into my mouth, swiping it against my own tongue, licking the insides of my cheeks, massaging my gums, setting me on fire again and again, setting me free for a moment from the real pain, the kind of pain from which you can never really heal.
________________________________________
Elena disappears into the kitchen. Cabinet doors open and slam shut. Drawers pull open violently and utensils crash to the floor. I don't say anything. I turn to the television. I don't even know what's on now, some man with short black hair is waving his arms. I want to ask Elena where the remote is. I want to hear something other than us talking. I want to throw something. Break a lamp or smash a vase. Punch someone in the face. Punch myself in the head. Jesus Christ, I want to ******** her again, just so we can both shut up and stop analyzing everything.
And then, as though she hears my thoughts, as though she agrees with my thoughts, she's on top of me. But she doesn't kiss me. This time she's holding a paring knife in one hand. She slices my right cheek. I curse because it hurts, because it scares me. But I start coughing again and I can't get her off me. She cuts my hand. Then she makes a third cut and a fourth and another little slice on my neck and my shoulder and my left cheek. I stop fighting back. Maybe I let her cut me because I think I deserve it. Maybe I let her cut me because she needs to.
My T-shirt and shorts are stained with spots of blood. My entire body itches and stings and soon all those jagged cuts feel like one big gash. I've never seen her be so intentionally messy, so careless and hurtful, so cruel. Seeing her like that makes me hard. But she doesn't cut me there, and I don't know whether I feel relieved or angry.
"I remember the first time we met," she says, throwing the knife to the floor. "That cut on your arm tasted like peaches."
She places her mouth against a cut on my face.
"Now you taste like metal. Like sucking on a penny." She licks my cheek, but it doesn't burn or sting any more than it already does. Nothing happens. "This is why you're leaving me," she says. "Because I no longer work. I'm no longer me. So who am I then?" she asks, speaking more to herself than to me. "If I can't heal people, if no one needs me, then who am I?" She touches her mouth with her fingers. "It's like I'm finally free but I don't know what to do with myself." And, suddenly, I'm the one helping her. I run my fingers through her tangled hair, gently, softly.
"You're Elena. A wife. A daughter. A nurse," I say. "You're a great nurse. That doesn't have to change."
She places her head down on my chest. "I can hear your heart beating," she says. She sighs, but I don't know if it's because what she's hearing is good or bad. "You don't want to leave," she says.
I don't know what to say. She's both right and wrong. I'm right and wrong. At this moment, I can't go anywhere. I'm too tired and weak and she's nestled on top of me, perfectly balanced, our bodies pressed together like two magnets. I imagine a forcefield around us, making it impossible for us to separate from each other. Stronger than an umbilical cord, beyond biological ties and family loyalty, the field around us pulsates and lives, a force of attraction beyond reason and fear and fate.
On the television, the same man is still mutely talking, holding a small bottle of pills in one hand. Behind him the silhouette of an overweight woman is rotating, her belly shrinking with every turn. Drowsily, I wonder if that woman shares a forcefield with someone.
"I should get some antiseptic and clean those wounds," Elena says.
"No, it's okay. Stay here." I touch her hair and she doesn't move. Fifteen years, I think to myself. How long did my parents stay together? Eight? I'm already twice as good as my father.
Elena falls asleep on top of me. She sleeps the same way she lives: quietly, gracefully. Her mouth never drops open, she never drools or mumbles in her sleep. I stay awake the entire night, watching her. As my wounds stop bleeding, my skin finally begins to burn. I know that when I get up in the morning, the cuts will still hurt, but not as bad.