Light in the Darkness

by CJ Brightley

  117: [no response]

  Lt. Sana: Well?

  117: Mirasan will deliver in a proper hospital? With proper medical attention? And charges against her will be dropped?

  Lt. Vell: Safe delivery of the baby, yes. No promises about the rest. It depends on your commitment and efforts.

  117: [no response]

  Lt. Sana: Don’t keep us waiting.

  117: All right. All right, I’ll see what I can do.

  October 9 (Palem Courier, online English-language edition)

  New State Security Service contingents sent to Eastern, Western Mountain Districts

  Mr. Bal (MP, Eastern Mountain District) and Mr. Gana (MP, Western Mountain District) welcomed the deployment of two more units of State Security Service troops to restore order in the increasingly anarchic mountain regions. Troops have also been assigned to protect the field headquarters of US-owned Adze Forest Products and the operations of China’s Shanyan Logging, which obtained a concession in the western mountain district just last year. The Kaiten copper mine in the east and the major coffee and cardamom plantations in the west will also receive protection.

  There are unconfirmed reports that reconnaissance helicopters fired on sites deep in the mountains that are believed to be bases for insurgent operations. Tempering military action with a conciliatory gesture, the government announced the release into house arrest of Nawalam Sashirayi, one of the instigators of this round of agitation. In a prepared statement, Mr. Sashirayi said he regretted the descent into violence that has followed the agitators’ initial demonstration in January, and he explicitly repudiated recent separatist actions. A spokesman for the State Security Service wouldn’t comment on the fate of Mr. Sashirayi’s coconspirators except to say that those who undermine the well-being of the country deserve the harshest punishment.

  (From the W— State Security Service’s files on the insurgency: email records)

  From: Lt. Sana

  Subject: Re: Re: The situation with Prisoner 116

  Date: October 11

  To: Capt. Aran

  Yes, I admit it was my responsibility to bring her in. It’s a very temporary setback that will be corrected as soon as it’s clear enough to take the helicopter over again.

  With respect, no one could have predicted 116’s behavior. That volcano’s going to erupt in what, a week? two weeks? I’d bet a month’s pay that it blows before the month is out. She should have been desperate to get the hell out of there. Instead, we order her into the helicopter, she says no. Vell and I go to grab her, she climbs up on the guard rail and starts spewing monkey talk at us, reverting to intelligible speech just to say that if we come one step nearer, she’ll jump.

  That would have suited me just fine, save us time and effort, but Vell pointed out that self-immolations are the sort of thing that set the human-rights crowd weeping and hand wringing. And I agree that we need to make it clear that no one dies unless we say so. We let 116 dive into the lava lake and this miserable lot are likely to whoop and cheer and count it a victory.

  By the time it’s safe to take the helicopter back there, her food and water will have run out, and I doubt she’ll be in any state to make grand gestures. Just give me another week or 10 days.

  (From the W— State Security Service’s files on the insurgency: email records)

  From: Lt. Den

  Subject: useful re: Prisoner 116?

  Date: October 15

  To: Lt. Sana (attachment)

  I know it’s none of my business anymore, but this news brief might be useful to you. The girl mentioned in it is the one 116 was sending letters to, remember? See where she says she wants to come here? She’d come tomorrow, she says. I wonder if Aran could get her issued an invite. It would be a PR win for the government, and I bet it would make 116 putty in your hands.

  Makes you almost think twice about having opposed the correspondence, huh!

  14

  Casting a Strong Net

  October 15 (Em’s diary)

  I saw Mr. Ovey last night. Maybe it was a dream, but it didn’t feel like a dream … though I don’t remember going out to sit on the veranda, which is where I was when I saw him. My feet were hanging over the edge, just above the water. I was watching a huge squashed-egg of a moon sinking in the west. Fish were jumping. I could hear the splash of them over the sound of the sea, and here and there I caught sight of their glint. And then there he was, breaking the surface just like a fish, right by the house. He put his elbows on the veranda and rested his chin on his hands and looked up at me. I was afraid he might choke or gasp, what with being up in the air and all, but he didn’t seem to mind a bit.

  “Hello, seaheart,” he said. Not sweetheart. Seaheart.

  I felt so many questions bubbling up in me, things I wanted to ask about the Seafather and the merfolk and life under the waves, and about hurricanes and families, and about your heart aching for people, and that last one made me realize that I might ought to go fetch Small Bill, because here was his father, but just then Mr. Ovey said,

  “You cast a strong net for family, just the way a seachild should. Good girl. Sea families have all kinds of members, don’t they. Seawater’s blood, blood’s seawater. You grip that net tight. You’ll bring’m all into the boat safe.” Then he slipped his arms back into the water, and he was going to go back under, and I don’t know if I said it or thought it: “But Small Bill!”

  I meant, don’t go yet! I meant, Small Bill and Mrs. Ovey and Lindie and Jenya’ll want to see you too.

  Why’d you come to me when your own family’s missing you so?

  “Nice job he’s done with the kitchen roofing for your place, and your uncle’s,” Mr. Ovey said. Called out, more like. He was already small, far away in the water, but I could hear pride in his voice. “Deena’s gonna have a heart attack if she catches him jumping from up there, though, even if it is high tide. Tell’m that, and keep’m in your net!”

  Then it was just waves and stars out there, and the fish weren’t jumping anymore.

  I don’t remember how I got back to my bed, but that’s where I woke up this morning. I know it sounds like it must of been a dream, but I don’t think so. It was extra real. It felt more real than lots of regular days have felt.

  On the way to school, I asked Small Bill if he’d seen his dad ever, since his dad was called under.

  “Once, I think,” he said, squinting into the sun. “He was way out … way out there. But he waved at me, and even though I couldn’t see his face, I could tell he was smiling.”

  I nodded hard, remembering how it was last night, when Mr. Ovey was swimming away. “Yeah! like you could feel or hear it.” Small Bill looked at me with raised eyebrows—double question marks. I told him about seeing his dad and gave him the message about not jumping off the kitchen roof.

  “You saw me do that?” A smile flashed across his face, but what stuck there was a kind of glare, angry-embarrassed.

  “I didn’t see! Bet it was sweet, though.” I wanted to get him to smile again. Plus, I bet his jump was sweet. I kind of want to try, myself.

  Small Bill’s smile didn’t exactly reappear, but the glare faded into something near.

  “It was … You didn’t see it at all? So it really … really was my dad. My dad saw me.”

  Our eyes met. His were wide and brimming, but he didn’t look away.

  “He doesn’t want you to give your ma a heart attack,” I said, and that made him laugh—which made me feel like I’d scooped sunshine off the waves.

  Small Bill’s part of the family I’ve caught in my net. Don’t you worry, Mr. Ovey. I ain’t tossing him back.

  October 17 (Em’s diary)

  I can hardly believe this. It’s like I’ve wandered into a dream and forgotten to wake up—which is good. I need to stay in this dream a while longer!

  It started in second period, when I got called to the principal’s office. At that point it was setting up to be a bad dream: as I walked down the hall, I w
as going over everything I’d done all week long, trying to think what it was that I was in trouble for, but I couldn’t come up with a single thing.

  It didn’t seem much better when I was face to face with Mr. Barnes. Both ends of his mouth were sloping down and it was choppy seas up there on his forehead. He had some papers in one hand and a stiff, shiny cardboard envelope in the other. The envelope had a red swooshing line across the front, with words that weren’t English, and there was some kind of official-looking label on the front, and something stamped over the corner of that.

  “It’s from the government of W—,” Mr. Barnes said. He held out one of the papers, and I could see the letterhead underneath a circular seal with an image of a bird whose tail swept over its head, its tips in flames. Government of W—, Ministry of Law and Justice it said, and then under that, another seal, a round shield with little flowers curling around it. State Security Service, it said. Panic juice spread out from my heart to the ends of my fingers and toes. I licked my lips.

  “It’s for you,” Mr. Barnes said, pushing the letter closer. I took it. “They didn’t know how to reach you, so they sent it care of the school.”

  I took my eyes off the words State Security Service and made them read the letter. Touched by your concern … desire to foster warm relations … untangle domestic problems here … extend an invitation

  Extend an invitation?

  In light of circumstances … expedited travel arrangements … and then a lot of details.

  “They’re inviting me to visit Kaya,” I said, looking up at Mr. Barnes, who pursed his lips and said,

  “I’m afraid I don’t know anything to speak of about current events or political figures in W—, but yes, that seems to be the case.”

  “Because of our thank you,” I said, even though I don’t suppose Mr. Barnes paid much attention to Mermaid’s Hands’ thank you.

  The sound of arguing floated in from the main office, where Mrs. Evans sits. She answers the phone, marks down kids who arrive late, and ushers us in to Mr. Barnes’s lair when we get in trouble. This time, though, she seemed to be trying to keep someone—lots of someones—out, but it didn’t work: the door behind me opened, and a bunch of people with cameras piled in, with Mrs. Evans following and scolding. There was all kind of flashing and popping, way more than for our Mermaid’s Hands thank you, and questions coming at me and Mr. Barnes too quick for us to catch them all. I recognized the copper wire hair of Mr. Landau, the newspaper reporter I’d talked to back on Monday. He winked at me when our eyes met and called out,

  “You like this turn of events, Em?”

  “It’s beyond my wildest dreams,” I said, and then there were more camera flashes, so many that I was seeing black and red dots in front of my eyes.

  I never thought I’d get a chance to say “beyond my wildest dreams” in real life, especially seeing as I have pretty wild dreams.

  The questions were things like how long had I known Kaya and would my parents let me go, and would they travel with me, and mixed in with those, a few I didn’t like the sound of—one asking did Kaya ever say anything in her letters to try to justify the loss of life and damage to property the insurgency had caused, and someone asking Mr. Barnes what he thought of his students being made into pawns in political games—but by this time Mr. Barnes’s and Mrs. Evans’s raised hands and raised voices were starting to have an effect, and everyone was quieting down. Mr. Barnes said he was sorry, but this was really too much of a disruption for a school that had already had plenty of disruption this year, and perhaps they could come back for twenty minutes or so when the school day was over. Then Mrs. Evans shooed them back out to the foyer and the front door. I could see the heads of teachers and kids peering out from nearby classrooms.

  “… trouble with the law, like her brother,” someone said, and “you see any police cars out front?” Hearing that kind of thing is like being force-fed rusty nails, but right then it couldn’t hurt me. The letter in my hand, inviting me to W—, was like a double hull of stainless steel.

  Mrs. Evans shut the door to the main office. She and Mr. Barnes exchanged a look.

  “Well, that’s not something that happens every day,” Mrs. Evans said.

  “I’d like more of the everyday days and fewer of the extraordinary ones,” Mr. Barnes muttered. He handed me the rest of the letter from W—, along with the envelope, and just stared at me a moment or two, not saying anything.

  “Come back after the buses have all left,” he said. “You can talk to them then. Though maybe we better see about getting your father in. I know I wouldn’t want a child of mine talking to reporters unsupervised.”

  “He won’t be able to come in. Him and Mr. Tiptoe and my uncle are out at sea today.” That wasn’t exactly true. They were hugging the coast, going salvaging for windmill bits. But it was true that he wouldn’t be able to make it in to dry land by the end of school.

  “Brett Tiptoe is the one with the phone,” Mrs. Evans reminded him, “so that means there’s no way to reach any other adult out there.” A disapproving sigh slipped out with the “out there.” Mr. Barnes shrugged. “We’ll just keep it short,” he said. “You run along now,” he added, and Mrs. Evans let me out.

  Mr. Dubois was waiting for me in Mr. Barnes’s office at the end of the day. “I don’t want you answering these questions alone,” he said, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but I guess I’m glad he came, because every time the reporter with the harsh questions about Kaya spoke up, Mr. Dubois said something smooth and bland about how my correspondence with Kaya was nonpolitical and how I was a true blue American through and through, laying it on so thick that if the window wasn’t open we might of suffocated from all the patriotism building up in there. Eventually the reporter stopped asking those sorts of questions.

  But Mr. Dubois also interrupted me if I tried to say anything about Kaya not getting to honor the Lady, or about her friend’s execution, or even when I tried to talk about her saving Mermaid’s Hands. He ran over my words with stuff about how great it was to have friends around the world and how wonderful it is to share traditions and how Kaya went to college in America and how he hoped I’d go to college, too, when I got old enough. I don’t know how much the reporters wrote down, but I’d say half of what got said came from Mr. Dubois, not me.

  About the time I was beginning to wonder how many more questions I could answer, Dad and Mr. Tiptoe showed up. I don’t recall Dad ever coming to the school before. It was strange to see him and Mr. Tiptoe in Mr. Barnes’s office. They seemed too big for that room, even though some of the reporters were taller and Mr. Barnes is fatter. Maybe it’s that everything about them seemed realer to me: the salt stains on their arms and the warm, safe smell of sunshine, mud, and fish on their clothes.

  “I’m taking my daughter home now,” Dad said, eyes moving between Mr. Barnes and Mr. Dubois, like he wasn’t sure who he should be talking to, which maybe he wasn’t.

  “Hey, Lightfoot, isn’t it? Twinkletoes? Tiptoe! Still fishing in restricted areas?” one of the reporters called.

  “That’s pelicans you’re thinking of, not us,” Mr. Tiptoe shot back, flashing a barracuda smile. “Seen how many fish them and the herons been swiping from the restricted areas? You maybe better get the Fisheries Service on it.”

  Mr. Tiptoe drove me and Dad down to the shore, then went back inland to pick up some things at the hardware store that you can’t come by in salvage. The tide was pretty far in, and our dinghy was bobbing and rocking where Dad had tied it.

  “What is all this?” Dad asked, nodding at the letter as he pulled on the oars. “Saying thank you wasn’t enough? Now you want to fly to the other side of the world for a visit?”

  “It wasn’t my idea! They invited me!” I protested, but my cheeks got hot as I was speaking, because it might not of been my idea, but it was definitely what I wanted.

  “You’ll have to tell them you’re sorry, but no,” Dad said. “We got a life to rebuild
here, there’s things that need doing. I can’t go gallivanting across the Pacific, and I ain’t sending you off halfway round the world on your own.”

  “But …” I never thought that Dad might say no. My dad, sitting across from me, muscles flexing as he rowed, was more powerful that W—’s Ministry of Law and Justice and its State Security Service. They could ask me to come and pull strings to make it possible, but Dad’s no stopped everything.

  “Maybe Ma’ll come with me, then,” I said. Dad didn’t rise to the bait.

  “I’m gonna ask Mr. Tiptoe if I can use his phone, and I’ll call her. Call her new number,” I said, my voice getting a little louder. Dad still didn’t say a thing, just kept rowing.

  When I reached Ma, when I finally got her to understand what I was saying, what I was asking, she laughed a little.

  Why did she laugh? I don’t like it when people laugh when there ain’t nothing funny to provoke it.

  Then she said, “I’m sorry, hon. I can’t do that. I just started at a new job. I can’t take time off now; I might as well quit if I did.”

  “But if I don’t go, who’ll save Kaya?” I asked, the words coming out all wobbly. I swallowed a couple times. Mr. Tiptoe was standing right there. I didn’t want to cry.

  “Not a sparrow falls to the ground without your father in heaven knowing about it,” Ma said. “You leave saving Kaya to him.”

  I swallowed again. I didn’t trust myself to speak.

  “Don’t you have a brother you’re on fire to save?” Ma asked. Not accusingly. Kind of gently. “Last time I talked to him, he said he’d just gotten a letter from you. He sounded so pleased. Now that I have this new job, I can save up some money for a visit. How about that?”

  I nodded—how dumb is that? You can’t see nods over the phone. So then I croaked out, “Yeah, that sounds good,” like the world’s saddest frog.