The Daughter of the Sea and the Sky

by David Litwack

  “It’s a secret.”

  “You can tell me. I won’t let anybody know besides Helena.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “There’s a window over my bed. No one thinks of it because it’s so small, but I can fit through. That is... if I have any place to go.” She glanced down, studying his knee.

  “Are you all right, Kailani?”

  She released the strand of hair and looked at him with her ocean-blue eyes.

  “First, I was happy here. Then Mr. Benjamin told me you’d be destroyed if I didn’t talk to the people who came. So when the people came, I talked to them. It seemed to make them feel better, and that made me feel good. Then the men with guns came and Mr. Benjamin’s friends started marching around with sticks. Now Helena won’t let me play in the labyrinth or go anywhere by myself—and she squeezes my hand too hard.”

  “She’s trying to keep you safe.”

  “Safe? Is that why those men are here? To hurt me?”

  “No. They’re not—”

  “Then why are they here?”

  He hesitated to tell her, but she had a right to know. “They’re here to take you back.”

  “Back where? To the Blessed Lands? I can’t go back yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “I haven’t finished my penance.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I don’t think it’s to the Blessed Lands.”

  “Then where? Not the....”

  She reached for the encomm screen and let her fingertips glide over its surface, then grasped the pointer and shook it. When the screen brightened, she clicked here, there, everywhere as if trying to find the hidden message.

  Gently, he took the pointer out of her hand.

  She spoke without looking at him. “What does termination mean, and why were you mad at the screen?”

  The answer stuck in Jason’s throat. He waited, listening, irrationally hoping for advice from on high. All he heard was the heater fan kicking on, muffling the shouts coming from the porch.

  Then a new sound: footsteps thumping down the hallway, coming fast. A sound like booted troopers running. He was relieved when Helena and her mother burst in.

  “Here you are,” Helena said.

  Kailani pressed closer to him. “It’s all right. I came to visit Jason.”

  “Don’t you ever run off like that again. Do you have any idea how much you scared us?”

  Kailani slipped off his lap and went to her, but stopped an arm’s length away. “Jason will be terminated if you don’t send me back.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I saw it on the screen.”

  Helena’s lips stretched into a thin, bloodless line. After a moment, she turned to her mother. “Please take Kailani to her cabin. Jason and I need to talk.”

  Martha placed an arm around Kailani’s shoulder and began to lead her away.

  Before they reached the hallway, Helena called out to them. “Kailani?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you like to go back to the Blessed Lands?”

  The little girl stared at her shoe tops. “Only if my penance is complete.”

  Jason came forward and knelt close to her. With one finger, he lifted her chin until their eyes met. “Why do you need to do penance before you go home?”

  Her ocean-blue eyes glistened. “Because... I’ve done something terribly wrong.”

  Then she grasped Martha Brewster’s hand and led her out of the great house.

  Chapter 39 – As Simple as Stones

  Saturday dawned, and despite the swirl of events, Jason stayed committed to his morning run. It gave him time alone, away from things too complex to understand. He pressed his hands against the bark of the sentinel tree, leaned forward and stretched. As he came closer to the ground, he could make out tracks left in the frost by Sebastian’s little creatures—bird claws and rabbit paws and a larger set of markings that might have been a raccoon.

  When a wedge of light spread across the tracks, he turned to find its source and caught the curtains of Kailani’s window being pushed aside. What’s she doing up so early?

  Two of Benjamin’s guards dozed under blankets on the steps by her locked door.

  Jason switched to his hamstring stretch, spreading his legs and lowering his palms until they brushed the frost. This time he shifted his position to watch the back wall of Kailani’s cabin, the wall with a window only a child could slip through.

  As he stretched, hidden in the shadows, he saw the window swing outward.

  A moment later, Kailani slipped through and dropped to the ground.

  What is she up to?

  She’d sailed a boat alone across the ocean and nearly drowned herself in the tide. Was it possible she’d try to run off alone through the wilderness?

  He gave her time to get a bit ahead, and then followed.

  She turned down the familiar path, not toward the farm’s entrance where the department agents awaited, but toward Grandmother Storyteller, the labyrinth and the Spirit Hill. She made no apparent effort to be stealthy but made almost no sound. Separated by no more than a hundred yards, she seemed weightless before him, her footfalls whispering across the frozen ground.

  She stopped at the rock with the word “Reflection” carved in it, traced the letters with her finger, and entered the shelter. Jason turned sideways behind a tree trunk and watched as she pulled something from her pocket, a message attached to a string, and stretched as high as she could to hang it from one of the saplings.

  She stared at it until it stopped spinning, then strolled back down the path with more spring to her step. He followed until she climbed back into the window of her cabin and the light inside blinked out.

  He took off at a sprint, now running with a purpose. He’d come to know the hole in Helena’s heart and had found his own as well. But what about Kailani? Was she just a salve for everyone else’s wounds, or did she have a wound of her own? In a fraction of the time it had taken to follow her, he arrived back at the shelter.

  Above his head hung totems—colored beads, a cheesecloth bag of spices, a paper plate painted with a face in its center, the old foam cup, and anything that could bear a message. He fumbled through the notes, most of them crinkly and dog-eared, searching lower down for a fresh one at the height a nine-year-old could reach.

  As he groped about in the gray morning light, a feather grazed his cheek—Kailani’s eagle feather, its quill stuck through the top of a note. He steadied the paper, twisting it until it faced the sunrise and he could read the words.

  To the wind. I miss you. I’d go where you dwell, take your place if I could, so you can return to the sea and the sky. But you’re gone for good. And now the sea and the sky have forsaken me.

  To the sea. I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment to you. Maybe you expected too much, saw more in me than I was. Forgive me.

  And to the sky. If only I could heal your pain so you could find a way to love me again.

  The note slipped from Jason’s fingers, paper and feather fluttering in the breeze like a butterfly on a string.

  ***

  After leaving the Reflection shelter, Jason went for a long run. He jogged down the path to the horse farm and followed the dirt road, farther than he’d ever gone before. At its end, he stayed in the shadows until a truck lumbered by, then crossed the highway and explored the far side. He searched until he caught a break in the trees, the poorly marked start of a trail.

  When he’d seen enough, he turned back and took off, sprinting until his calves ached and his lungs burned, until exhaustion drove thought from his mind. As he ran along the road, he saw only the edges of the trees, their outlines blurred as though at the point of dissolving. He heard only his own breathing and the pounding of his shoes on the path. As far as his eyes and ears could tell, the rest of the world had vanished without leaving a shadow or whisper behind.

  ***

  Later that afternoon, he sat at his desk and stared
at the screen, accomplishing nothing. Finally he logged off and headed back toward Kailani’s cabin.

  It was dinner time. He watched as Benjamin’s guards brought trays, and waited until the trays were removed. By that time, the sun had dipped low on the horizon, scattering rays of light between the branches. He hesitated, uncertain. Then at once, he leapt to the porch, taking all three stairs in a single stride.

  He announced his presence with knocks so hard, his knuckles stung from the cold.

  Helena opened the door.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  She glanced back to where Kailani sat slumped on her bed. “Now?”

  “These men can watch her.”

  She checked with Kailani, grabbed a warm jacket, and followed him out the door.

  He led her down the path past Grandmother Storyteller, with no word or touch between them until they reached the stone that marked the entrance to the Reflection shelter.

  “This way,” he said, and she followed him inside.

  She read the note, once, twice, three times, but said nothing.

  From there, they tramped along in the near dusk to the trail between the knee-high boulders, and hiked up the path to the Spirit Hill.

  All about them lay the ravages of winter, broken branches and debris and at one point, a dead tree that had fallen across the path. Jason offered to help her over, but she declined. Finally, when they were halfway up and the steepness had increased, she reached out and grasped his hand.

  By the time they reached the top, the orange ball of the March sun was a thumb’s width from the horizon. They had just settled on the bench with the lion face on top when Helena stood up as if she’d forgotten something. She fumbled on the ground until she found three stones, and then placed them in a row between them.

  “For you,” she said as she set the first stone. “For Kailani, and for me.”

  Jason gazed out, trying to think where to begin. Beyond the woods, the mountains stretched out, row upon row, dark blue fading into grays and then merging with the haze of the sky.

  After a minute, he turned to her. “If only it were as simple as stones.”

  “It is simple,” she said. “We both know what to do.”

  “Are you sure you’re ready to embrace blind faith in the Spirit?

  “As ready as I’ve been to have blind faith in reason. What if both sides make myths? They make myths of their god. We make a god of reason. Most of us are just trying to find our way in life, and that’s hard enough. Does it matter so much where we live? Not as long as Kailani’s safe, and you and I are together.”

  “What if they’re all like Benjamin?”

  “They won’t be.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because they sent him back. More likely they’ll be like Kailani.” She took his hands in hers and squeezed. “The hell with reason, Jason. My father taught me to do what was right, not what was simple. What’s right is to take her home.”

  He stood and wandered to the edge of the trees, as if walking into the setting sun. Helena came up behind and rested a hand on his shoulder, and together they stared down the trail they’d climbed just moments before. In the waning light of dusk, it looked like a tunnel with only darkness at its end.

  He turned to face her. “We should go. It’s getting hard to see.”

  “Not until we decide. The deadline’s tomorrow.”

  A gust of wind kicked up, rattling tree limbs and twigs on the ground, a bleak and lonely sound. Jason pressed his eyelids shut and tried to sort through the images flowing through his mind, sketches of memories past.

  He saw himself as a young boy, walking Helena home along the cliffs. He saw the classroom where they’d first met, recreating the scene in detail. Helena sat by the open window, back straight, eyes trained on the teacher. He could still trace the curve of her neck as he watched, hoping she’d turn for an instant and notice him.

  He saw the blackboard in front with its partially erased text and the broken pieces of chalk on its ledge. He could smell the chalk dust and the scent of flowers in the vase on the teacher’s podium. He could see the world map behind the podium showing the land bridge, with the asylum gate and the statue of the Lady of Reason blown out in exaggerated size.

  The image flickered and changed. A different one formed in his mind, the poster of a firefly newly set free, a young girl holding an empty jar, one arm extended, fingers parted as if to recapture possibilities lost.

  He grasped Helena by the arms.

  Her brows lifted, and she stood balanced in the moment. One hand stretched out to touch him, the fingertips almost reaching to his cheek.

  He nodded, a quick okay. Then he took her hand and led her down the darkened path back to Kailani’s cabin.

  Chapter 40 – A Trailer in the Woods

  The Minister of Commerce paced the confines of the trailer. The government of the soulless had sent it here, to this cold and faraway spot near the land bridge, a place to await Kailani’s return. The trailer was wide enough for a bed and a desk, with a two-foot walkway in between. A recreational vehicle, they called it, but he enjoyed no recreation in it, just the constant pacing and a mood swinging between hope and despair.

  They’d provided him with pen and paper, and a courier waiting outside, so he could transact business and keep occupied.

  And send for the poetess when he was sure of the child’s return.

  Now, at last, the word had come. She was safe and would be on her way, but there was some delay, a procedural matter. He’d complained bitterly. To be so close—why did he have to wait? The diplomats assured him she’d be returned no later than Sunday. Still, the question remained: was it time to tell the poetess?

  How shattered she’d looked the evening before he left, hunched over the railing of their lanai, leaning out over the valley as if trying to touch the desert below.

  She kept her back to him as she spoke. “It’s my fault she’s gone.”

  “Moving to the mainland was our decision. We couldn’t know how she’d respond.” He touched her on the arm, trying to make her face him.

  She pulled away. “That’s not why she ran off.”

  “You mustn’t—”

  She silenced him with a slash of her hand. “We had words the night before. I told her it was time to take responsibility and move on, forgetting she was a child and that her pain was as great as mine. I added my misery to hers.”

  “You’re being too harsh on yourself.”

  “Too harsh?” She turned, her face pale and drawn. “She’d always been strong-willed, needing the last word, but that night, she said nothing and walked away. Now she’s gone, maybe forever.”

  Gone forever? Not if the leaders of the soulless were true to their word. He crossed the final steps to the desk and stared at the blank sheet of paper waiting for him. Beside it lay an envelope, addressed and ready to go. He pressed his palms together in front of his chest as if praying, then gradually raised them until his fingertips brushed his lips. He could feel the warm whisper of his breath.

  He backed away and strode past the desk to the door, thought to go out into the chill air to clear his head, but stopped when he remembered the guards posted there. He was no prisoner, but he’d need to explain himself to their officials. How would he tell these strangers that he wanted to be alone in the snow-crusted woods, to feel the wind on his face, to envision a face surrounded by golden hair—two faces really, one young and one older—to remember it all, the joy and the pain. How to explain that?

  He stepped back to the desk and with a single motion, graceful for a man his size, slid the chair back and sat down.

  He should have anticipated how they’d respond. Their bureaucracy was no different from his own. They knew he was a top official from the other side, a progressive, sympathetic with their thinking, close to the Supreme Leader.

  And demanding the return of a person of importance.

  They’d never let such a request pass, as they said i
n this country, “below the radar.” As his own government would have done, they overreacted and sent an army.

  For some reason he could not fathom, the people of this settlement in the wilderness were reluctant to let her go. According to the diplomats, the residents of the farm loved her and were trying to protect her until they were sure she’d be treated well. Three generations after the treaty, they remained suspicious.

  Having been instrumental in breaking the impasse between worlds, he understood.

  Now, men with body armor and guns surrounded the settlement, and though their diplomats said the situation was under control, he worried. Would his sin of falsehood come back to haunt his dreams?

  Time to tell the poetess? She wanted certainty, but some risk remained. He was certain of only two things: Kailani was alive, and not far away.

  He grabbed the pen and let his thick hand hover over the paper. He waited, picturing the two faces, one young and one older, both beloved by him.

  He began to write, forming each letter in his well-practiced script.

  My dearest poetess.

  Chapter 41 – Confrontation

  The mall was brightly lit, but Sebastian could sense the darkness descending through the skylights overhead. He’d picked this mall because it was nearby, and he didn’t want to leave Lizzie for long, but he had no idea what kind of store would carry a bell.

  He wandered through the aisles, past sales clerks, purveyors of perfume and cosmetics. Late in the day, the crowds had thinned. Occasional young couples goggled at pasty mannequins, dreaming of their future lives and of things they could ill afford. The mannequins’ fingers waved at them and at the empty air.

  Desperate to get back, he stopped at each counter for directions. “I’m looking for a bell for my wife.”

  “Sorry. Try housewares.”

  “Anything will do, but I’d prefer something with a loop for her finger.”

  “We have nothing but egg timers. Try jewelry and accessories.”

  “A strong tone, perhaps, with engravings on its sides.”