Partridge nods. “You found it.”
She recalls playing I Remember with Partridge, exchanging memories. She told him about the birthday pony, and he told her about a bedtime story, a bad king and a swan wife. A swan wife—like the swan pendant with its blue eye. Pressia looks at Bradwell. “Maybe it’s not that he’s holding back. It’s just that he doesn’t know what’s important.”
“And what is important?” Bradwell asks. “I’d love to know.”
“What about the swan wife?” Pressia says to Partridge. “Tell me the story.”
Partridge hasn’t told the story of the swan wife aloud since that one time when he tried to tell it to his brother, Sedge, after the Detonations. Back then he could still remember his mother’s laugh, but over time the air in the Dome was so empty, so vacant, that he felt like the smells and tastes and even memories were being eaten by a hollow pocket of air in his own head. Aribelle Cording Willux—all of the small traces of his mother were slowly disappearing. He knew it. Even only a week after the Detonations, he’d started to forget the sound of her voice. But now he’s sure that if he could hear it, just one note of it, it would all come rushing back.
“The story goes like this.” He starts to tell the story that he’s been telling himself, alone, for years. “Before she was a swan wife, she was a swan maiden who saved a young man from drowning, and he stole her wings. He was a young prince. A bad prince. He forced her to marry him. He became a bad king.
“The king thought he was good, but he was wrong.
“There was a good king, too. He lived in another land. The swan wife doesn’t yet know he exists.
“The bad king gave her two sons. One was like the father in that he was ambitious and strong. One was like her.”
Partridge feels restless, and although he’s weak, he has to get up and walk. He’s barely aware of himself. He’s touching things with his uninjured hand—the handle of a wheelbarrow, grooves and cracks in the cement-block walls. He stops and asks Pressia for the necklace. He holds it, just like his mother had told him to when she was telling him the story. He feels the sharp edges of the swan’s wings. He goes on.
“The bad king put the swan wife’s wings in a bucket down a dark old dry well, and the boy who was like the swan wife heard ruffling down that well. One night the boy climbed down the well and found the wings for his mother. She put them on, and she took the boy she could—the one like her who didn’t resist her—and flew away.”
But then he stops again. He feels light-headed.
“What is it?” Pressia asks.
“Keep going,” Bradwell says. “Come on.”
“He needs time,” Pressia says, “to remember it.”
But it’s not that he’s stuck. No. He remembers the story perfectly. The reason he stops is that he can almost feel his mother. The story released in the air also releases some part of her. He stops so that he can take it in and then it’s gone. In these brief moments, he can remember what it was like to be a little boy. He remembers his boyish arms and his restless legs. He remembers the nubs of the blue blanket that they sat under at the beach house, the feeling of the swan pendant in his fist, like a big sharp tooth.
“The swan wife became a winged messenger. She took her one son with her to the land of a good king. She told him of the bad king’s plan to take over the good king’s land, that he would make fire roll down from the mountaintops to destroy everyone in its path. All of the good king’s people would be destroyed in a ball of fire, and this new land—purified by fire—would belong to the bad king.
“The good king fell in love with the swan wife. He didn’t force her to shed her wings. Here, she could be both maiden and swan. And because of this, she fell in love with him. He gave her a daughter—as beautiful as the swan wife, a gift.
“And he built a great lake to put out the fire as it rolls down the mountain. But because he was distracted by his love for her, the waters weren’t ready when the fires came.”
He starts to feel sick. His heart is kicking in his chest. He feels like he can’t quite catch his breath, but he’s trying to speak calmly. He knows that the story means something. Why hasn’t he told them about the beach and the pills? He knows what it all means, doesn’t he? His mother used to give them rhymed riddles so that they could have clues to where she’d hidden their birthday presents, hadn’t she? His father had started the tradition while they were dating, while they were in love. The family liked riddles. What does this one mean?
“And so when the fire rolled down the mountain, the swan wife sought safety for her children. She carried her two children back to the bad king’s land.
“She placed her daughter—whom no one knew—into the hands of a barren woman to raise.
“She returned her son to his crib—because he would always be treated like a prince.
“And then it was time for her to fly off to join the good king—because the bad king would kill her. But as she crawled away from her son, he reached for her and grabbed her feet with his hands, sooty from the fire. He would not let her go until she made a promise not to fly away. ‘Burrow underground,’ he begged her, ‘so you can always be watching.’
“She agreed. She said, ‘I’ll make trails for you to find me. Many, many trails. All leading to me. You’ll follow them when you’re old enough.’
“She left her wings and crawled into the earth itself.
“And it was because of the boy’s sooty hands that the swan has black feet.”
His mother was a saint.
He likes this version of things.
His mother died a saint—except that now he knows she survived. He knew it by the way his father said, Your mother has always been problematic. He knew it by the way the old woman who was killed in the Death Spree said, He broke her heart. He knows it now.
The swan is not just a swan.
It’s a sealed locket—my phoenix.
He says again, “She returns her son to his crib—because he will always be treated like a prince.”
What were the little blue pills? Why did she force him to take them even when he was sure they only made him sicker? No more pills, he remembers crying. No, please. But she wouldn’t stop. They had to take them every three hours. She would wake him up in the middle of the night. Why would she give him pills that would make him resistant? Did she want to save him? Did she know that, one day, he would have the chance to become a better version of himself—part of the superspecies—and did she want to render him useless? How did the pills make him resistant to changes in his behavioral coding? Why that and only that?
If she wasn’t a saint, what was she?
A traitor?
He says again, “And that is why the swan wife has black feet,” but this time it feels like a question.
Pressia isn’t quite sure that she understands what she’s heard. A fairy tale. That’s all. Was she looking for more? No. It’s meaningless.
Partridge looks at Bradwell. “You’re thinking something about my mother.”
“Aribelle Cording Willux,” Bradwell says, as if he’s a little amazed by the name itself.
“Just say it,” Partridge shouts.
“Say what?” Bradwell says, and Pressia can tell that Partridge is right. Bradwell is the one holding back, as Our Good Mother would say. Not Partridge.
“You know something,” Pressia says. “Are you going to lord it over us? Make us beg?”
Bradwell shakes his head. “The swan with black feet, it’s a Japanese fairy tale. I was raised by a scholar of this kind of stuff. And that’s not the way the old story goes. There is no second king. There is no third child—a beautiful daughter. There is no fire rolling down the mountain. And at the end, the swan is supposed to use her wings to fly away. Not underground.”
“So?” Partridge says.
“So it’s not just a little bedtime story. Your mother was giving you a coded message. You’re supposed to figure it out.”
Pressia feels tingling in the ski
n of the doll’s head. She rubs it with her good hand to soothe the nerves. She wants to know what this story means, but she’s afraid of it too. Why? She’s not sure.
“I don’t get it,” Partridge says, but there’s something about the story that Pressia feels deeply. The story is about separation and loss.
“But you do get it,” Bradwell says flatly.
Pressia remembers what Partridge told her about the story. She says, “You thought your father was the bad king who stole her wings—you said so yourself.” Her head feels heavy. Her heart is racing. That’s not all of it. She can tell it’s only the surface.
“I thought there was a reason she liked the story, on a personal level,” Partridge says. “My parents didn’t get along.”
“And?” Bradwell says.
“You tell me,” Partridge says. “You seem to have already figured it all out, as usual.”
“She had two sons,” Bradwell says quickly. “Then she took you to Japan as a baby, and she fell in love with the good king and had a baby. Who is the good king exactly? I don’t know. But he was powerful. He had information.”
Pressia glances at Partridge, whose body looks rigid—with fear or anger? Bradwell seems agitated, maybe even charged by all that he’s heard. He looks at Pressia, then Partridge, and back again. She’s supposed to know what’s going through his mind. She doesn’t. Why does he seem almost excited?
“Come on, Pressia,” Bradwell says almost pleadingly. “You’re not still just some little girl embarrassed by a doll. You already understand. You already know.”
“A little girl? I thought I was a type or, better yet, just some debt you had to pay off.” She touches the doll. “I don’t need you to tell me who I am.” But as she says it, she wonders if she still is a little girl in some ways. Just a few days ago, she was going to live her life in a cabinet in the back room of a barbershop. She was willing to retreat and live through clippings in magazines and dream of the Before and the Dome.
“You were never a type or a debt. Hear me out.”
“Just stick to the story,” Pressia says.
“Tell us what you really think,” Partridge says.
“Okay,” Bradwell says. “Here’s my take. The man your mother had a child with, he was in on everything that the Japanese were doing—or trying to undo. Radiation resistance. Your mother fed him information. I agree with your mother’s decision there. Some of the Japanese were really the good guys, if you ask me. My parents were on that side of things too.” He pauses for a moment. “I barely remember my parents’ faces.” He looks at Partridge. “Why didn’t you get more coding? Why weren’t you a ripe specimen?”
“They tried to give me more coding. I was resistant. It didn’t take,” Partridge says flatly.
“How did your daddy react to that?”
“Don’t call him that.”
“I bet he went nuts,” Bradwell says.
“Look, I hate my father more than anyone. I’m his son. I can hate him in a way that no one else can.”
The room goes quiet.
Partridge says, “I hate my father’s condescension, his reserve. I hate that I’ve never really seen him laugh loudly or cry. I hate his hypocrisy. I hate his head—the constant little shake of it, like he’s always disapproving of me. I hate the way he looks at me like I’m worthless.” Partridge glances around the room. “So was he happy that my body was rejecting coding? No. He wasn’t.”
“Because?” Bradwell says.
“Because he thinks my mother had something to do with it.”
“He underestimated her,” Bradwell says. “I think she knew all about Operation Phoenix and so did the person who gave her the pendant. That person had made Phoenix into a pet name, maybe reclaiming it somehow. She had to know what her husband and his people had in mind—mass destruction, Dome survival, and then eventually, after the earth regenerated enough, the emergence of his superspecies. And maybe she told the other side what he was up to. The swan wife became a winged messenger, right? They tried to put a stop to the plan, save some people. But at a certain point she knew they’d run out of time… I don’t think Willux would care if she’s alive or not—he left her for dead once already. Does he regret not killing her off ? Is that all it is—revenge? Is he willing to use his only son just to make sure his wife is dead? Or does her survival mean that she knows something, a piece of information that he wants.”
“You don’t know him,” Partridge says, but his voice is so soft that it has the tone of surrender.
Bradwell stares at the floor and shakes his head. “Look at what he’s done to us, Partridge. We’re the ones who can hate him in a way you can’t.”
Pressia looks at the doll-head fist, a reminder of a childhood she never really had. “What does this have to do with me?” She can’t think clearly. Her head pounds. She knows that her life is about to shift, but she doesn’t know how. She stares at the doll’s fringe of plastic lashes, the small hole in its lips. Her cheeks burn. Everyone around her knows something. They don’t want to say it. Doesn’t she already know it herself? It’s all there, in the bedtime story, but she can’t see it. “Why did the OSR and the Dome want me to find Partridge? How did they even know I exist?”
Partridge sticks his hands in his pockets and looks at the floor. Has he already put something together, too? Maybe he’s smarter than Bradwell’s given him credit for.
“You’re the little girl,” Bradwell says. “In the fairy tale. You’re the baby from the good king.”
Pressia looks at Partridge sharply.
“You and Partridge,” Bradwell whispers.
“You’re my half brother?” Pressia says. “My mother and your mother…”
“Are the same person,” Partridge says.
Pressia hears the sound of her own heart. That’s all.
Pressia’s mother is the swan wife. She may be alive.
PRESSIA
CHIP
PRESSIA CAN ONLY THINK OF ALL the things that may no longer be true—the entire childhood her grandfather invented. Is her grandfather even her grandfather? The giant mouse with white gloves at Disney World, the pony at her birthday party, ice cream cake, the teacup ride, the goldfish at the Italian festival, her parents’ church wedding, the reception under a white tent. Was any of it true?
But she remembers a fish. It isn’t the one from her grandfather’s stories pressed into her memory. Not the fish in the plastic bag won at the Italian festival. No. There was a fish tank and a pocketbook tassel, and a heating duct under a table that seemed to purr. She was wrapped in her father’s coat. She sat on his shoulders, dipping under flowering tree limbs. She knows it was her father. But the woman whose hair she brushed, who smelled sweet, was that her mother? Or was her mother the woman on the handheld recorder, the one singing about the girl on the porch and the boy who wants her to run off with him? Is that why it was a recording—because she couldn’t be there? Because she had to return to her real family, her legitimate sons? Someone played that song for her dutifully, even when Pressia had grown tired of it. A barren woman, that’s how Partridge put it in the story of the swan wife.
Those things were never a story. They’re real. The song is in her head—into the Promised Land and the talking guitar and how he’s going to spirit the girl away in his car.
The locks on the door unlatch from the outside, and the door swings open. It’s the woman with the broom-spear. She has alcohol in a large bottle and a stack of neatly folded rags, gauze, another leather band like the one used to stop the bleeding of Partridge’s amputated pinky, and something else—probably a knife—bundled in cloth. Bradwell takes them, and, without a word, the woman leaves, locking the door again with a series of clicks. Pressia closes her eyes for a moment, trying to steel herself.
“Are you going to be okay with this?” Bradwell asks Pressia.
“I wish someone else could do it. I don’t want any more favors from you.”
“Pressia,” Bradwell says, “your grandfa
ther isn’t the reason I came looking for you. I just blurted that out. I don’t know why. But it’s not the whole story—”
She cuts him off. “Let’s get it over with.” She doesn’t want to hear any more stories right now, especially not any in which Bradwell tries to redeem himself.
She lies on the floor, on her stomach, tucking her OSR jacket under her head. The bell she’d taken from the barbershop is still in the jacket pocket, forming a hollow pocket of air. She’d forgotten about it and now she’s glad it’s here—a reminder of how far she’s come. She tucks the doll head under her chin. She closes her eyes, smells the floor—dirt, a smoky dust, faint traces of oil. Bradwell sweeps her hair to either side, exposing the back of her neck. His touch surprises her—it’s so light, it’s almost feathery.
Bradwell keeps saying, “It’s okay. I’ll be careful.”
“Stop talking,” she tells him. “Just do it.”
“Is that what you’re going to use? Jesus,” Partridge says. She pictures all of Bradwell’s butchery knives. “Did you put the alcohol on yet?” Partridge sighs. “You’ve got to keep it clean!” Is this what an older brother is like? Pressia wonders. Hovering around? Overprotective?
“Out of my light,” Bradwell says.
“I don’t want to watch,” Partridge says. “Trust me.”
She hears Partridge walk to the edge of the cramped room. He’s shuffling nearby. He’s processing all of this too, she figures. It changes who his mother is, doesn’t it? Does a saint have an affair and a child by another man? She wonders how he’s doing with this new version of his mother. It’s easier to think of him than herself right now, but those thoughts barrel at her too. Why didn’t her grandfather tell her the truth? Why did he lie to her all these years? But at the same time, she knows the answer. He probably found this little girl, and he took her in.
If she and Partridge have the same mother, and Partridge is white, then her mother has to be white—her mother, who went to Japan, who became a traitor, a spy? Her mother is the woman in the photograph on the beach and the same woman on the handheld computer screen, singing her a lullaby. Did she record it because she knew she was leaving her daughter? The photograph—her mother’s hair kicked around by the wind, sunburned cheeks, a smile that seemed as happy as it did sad. Who then is the mother she’s always imagined—the young and beautiful Japanese woman who died in the airport?
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