The Kaleidoscope Sisters

by Ronnie K. Stephens

  * * *

  The butterfly never got more than a few feet ahead of Quinn. Like the indigo butterflies she had seen on her first night, this one appeared to glow. The darker the cave got, the brighter the wings became until the path was bathed in red; whatever coated the stalactites and stalagmites shined white in the light of the butterfly. Quinn wasn’t afraid of many things, yet she struggled to keep moving. The eerie hue made her feel like she was being swallowed by something enormous and angry.

  Quinn had been following the butterfly for what seemed like hours. She had long since eaten the last of her marshmallow cake, her body ached, and the bulb was beginning to wear a hole in the fabric Quinn was using to carry the object. She kept having to shift the bulb from one hand to another to keep her arms from cramping. Now both arms burned. The bulb didn’t seem to be getting any larger, yet the weight in Quinn’s hand felt heavier and heavier as she walked. She was having trouble lifting her feet, too, which made navigating the uneven terrain ever more difficult. She stumbled every few steps, stiffening her ankles and knees to stay upright.

  The awkward movement reminded Quinn of Riley just before her first birthday. Like Quinn, Riley never used a walker or the sides of furniture when she began to walk. One day, she simply stood up and put one foot in front of the other, then again and again. Quinn smiled to herself, thinking of the stubborn way Riley would stare at the ground when she fell. She never cried. Just gritted her teeth and pushed herself up, taking each deliberate step until she was moving across the floor like children twice her age.

  Quinn tripped, landing hard on her knee. She felt the skin break.

  “This is useless!” she shouted at the butterfly, which now hovered in front of her. “I don’t even know where you’re taking me, or if I’m supposed to follow you at all!”

  The butterfly hovered near her for another moment, then darted farther into the cave.

  “Oh, great. Now I’m lost and I can’t see.” Quinn screamed until her throat felt raw, then began to cry again. How would she get home, and what would she do when she got there?

  The blood coming from her knee slowed to a trickle. She could feel a bruise forming, making the joint difficult to bend. Still, she had never been the sort to quit, especially when Riley needed her, so she felt around for a rock to use as leverage. Once she had located one small enough to grip comfortably, she pulled herself to a standing position and looked around. She couldn’t see anything. The expanse before her was ink black, suffocating like the kind of darkness that makes your eyes throb when you stay under water for too long. Quinn stopped crying, and her frustration turned to despair. She was lost. She remembered what Aimee had said about time and how if she returned home, things would be as though she hadn’t been gone at all. Then she wondered how long Riley and her mother would be trapped in unending sleep. This place was supposed to fix problems, yet the people she loved most would remain in their beds forever, because she couldn’t find her way back to them.

  Suddenly aware of the weight in her hands, Quinn raised the makeshift rucksack to her chest. “Of course!”

  Between the fog of her injured knee and panic over failing her family, Quinn had forgotten that the bulb was luminescent. She eased the fabric from the top of the bulb with her left hand, careful to steady the object with her right. The bulb lit up the cavern easily, casting a red glow that pulsed each time Quinn felt a beat in her hand. She walked deeper into the cave, the way the butterfly had gone. Before long, she came to a room with several paths jutting out in different directions like the spokes on a bicycle wheel.

  “Now what?” she asked herself.

  As if in answer, the butterfly reappeared at the mouth of one tunnel. Quinn didn’t know whether to be grateful for the insect’s return or annoyed that the stupid thing had abandoned her in the first place.

  “You again, huh? Thought you’d gone off and left me,” Quinn mumbled under her breath.

  As she approached, though, Quinn saw another red flash of light, then another and another until the path was alive with glowing, red butterflies. She was tempted to take one of the glorious creatures home to Riley, but of course that would only encourage the sorts of questions Quinn wouldn’t be able to answer. So she settled for following the swarm down yet another path. With any luck, the pool they’d been searching for wouldn’t be much farther.

  When Quinn finally rounded a bend and came upon the pool, she was unprepared for the majesty of the shimmering water. She stood in awe, watching the perpetual ripple move across the surface like a thousand small tremors. The red glow of the butterflies and the shining white skin of the stalactites and stalagmites took on a silver sheen, and the whole cave seemed to sway in time with the bulb pulsing in Quinn’s hand. She sat down on a rock and tried to memorize the space. If she could bring nothing else back, Quinn was determined to describe this room to Riley. She wanted to capture every movement, every color, every flashing, red wing. If Quinn did decide to come back, perhaps her stories would remain somewhere in the recesses of Riley’s mind. Perhaps this would be enough to stave the slow collapse of Quinn’s own heart, already imploding under the weight of her indecision.

  Chapter Eight

  Quinn set the bulb in the center of the fabric she had been using as a rucksack, then folded the corners around the edges until she held a quilted heart in her hands. She noticed again how this heart seemed to grow heavier as she got closer to home, and she wondered if what she felt was her own worry, a physical manifestation of the tightness she felt in her chest. She held this thought in her lungs, shut her eyes, and stepped into the pond. This time, the cocoon-like sensation and raspberry air were familiar. Without the panic she had felt in the garden, Quinn realized that she was able to see and hear and smell after all. Fear must have muted some of her senses, instinctively trying to calm her as she passed between realms.

  With the discovery that all her senses were working, Quinn focused on her surroundings. What she saw was beyond anything she had imagined. The sky was blind dark, but white stars streaked across the black in every direction. There were planets too, or at least large balls pinned to the sky, the way planets appeared in her science textbooks. Some were red as the butterflies that had shown her the way home; she saw balls of cyan and marigold and sienna. Every color she could name, and several she couldn’t, the entire universe laid out like a painter’s palette. Art class rarely held her attention, but she saw in this bridge—if that’s what she was looking at—the same wonder that artists throughout time must have seen when they looked out at the world.

  The sounds were surreal. Quinn had always heard that space was completely silent. Perhaps she was not passing through space after all, since the sky around her was anything but quiet. What she heard was unearthly. The stars seemed to hum like the buzz of electricity, but the pitch was higher, and there was harmony in their song. She also heard something like the recordings of tectonic plates shifting at the bottom of the ocean, an almost weary groan, each time she passed one of the enormous balls of color.

  She closed her eyes and tried to focus on the raspberry air moving in and out of her body. She felt cold when she inhaled, as though a winter wind was moving right through her. She held her breath until her chest was an empty balloon, then exhaled through her mouth and memorized the taste of the strange atmosphere leaving her. Her arms were pinned to her sides, but Quinn could feel the cocoon expand and collapse with her breathing. She turned all her thoughts to the way the encasing met her skin, soft as the muslin baby blankets her mother used to wrap Riley in before naps.

  * * *

  Quinn remembered asking her mother one afternoon why Riley calmed down when she was wrapped in one of the blankets.

  “This is the closest thing to her first home,” her mother had explained.

  “What do you mean? This is her first home.”

  “No, Quinn. Her first home was here.” Quinn’s mother put a hand on her belly. “Everyone learns the womb before they learn the rest of the
world. When the rest of this,” her mother swept a hand through the air, “becomes too much, we instinctively return to the safest place we know.”

  Quinn must have shown her confusion, because her mother kept explaining.

  “Think about the way you sleep, all curled up on your side, or how you can sit in the bath for hours—those are just some of the ways people imitate being in the womb.”

  “So Riley thinks she’s inside you?”

  “Perhaps. Or maybe the blanket just makes her feel connected to something, like she isn’t alone. Loneliness is one of the most human conditions. Some of us spend our entire lives trying to fill empty spaces. Whether we’re putting a couch in the living room or listening to a song for the hundredth time, the goal is always to feel a little less vacant, a little less hollow.”

  “Do you feel hollow?”

  “No, honey. I have you and Riley.”

  Even then, Quinn had recognized the way her mother’s voice changed when she was lying to them. “You don’t miss Dad?”

  That was the last thing Quinn remembered saying that day. Her mother had gone silent, as she often did when Quinn asked about her father and, lately, about Riley’s heart.

  * * *

  The cocoon peeled down Quinn’s body until her limbs were free. She imagined she was an orange, and she felt an invisible pressure wedged between her skin and the cocoon. The parts of her that her clothes didn’t cover felt raw, like the skin had been ripped from some other part of her and was suddenly aware of a much larger world. She took a deep breath, pushed against the thin, iridescent edge separating her from the water, and raised her body to the surface. The air stung her face and legs. She checked for the bulb, which she had wrapped and tucked into her jacket pocket with the starfish from Aimee. Quinn looked around and saw that she was back in the butterfly garden. She took another deep breath, then another, basking in the ease with which the air moved down into her lungs.

  She was home.

  Chapter Nine

  Her mother and Riley were still asleep when Quinn slipped back into the house. In her room, she checked the clock on her cell phone. She had been in the other realm for at least two days but, according to the screen on the phone, she had been gone for a little less than an hour. Butterfly had burrowed under a blanket at the foot of Riley’s bed. Quinn started toward him, but his head rose and he stared at her, holding a low growl in his throat.

  “What’s wrong, Butterfly?”

  Quinn stopped where she was and kneeled, holding her hands out to him.

  “Come here, boy.”

  He didn’t budge.

  “What’s got you spooked?” Quinn pressed, but she stayed as still as she could. She could feel him studying her, deciding whether or not she was a threat to Riley.

  After several long minutes, he rose and moved toward her. His steps were cautious, his ears stiff. Quinn could hear him sniffing the air, then her shoes, her pants, her jacket and, finally, her hands.

  The moment Butterfly pressed his nose to her cupped palms, Quinn could see his body soften. He nuzzled the crook of her arm, then began licking the knee she had scraped in the cave. Strangely, there was no blood; the skin had closed over the wound and healed completely. Quinn ran her fingers over her knee. Curious, she pressed the tips of her fingers into the skin.

  “Ow!”

  While the physical signs of her fall had disappeared, the bruise remained, a painful reminder that Quinn was not, in fact, crazy. The other realm had been real.

  “What happened?” Riley mumbled, pulling the comforter up to her neck.

  “Nothing, kid. Everything’s all right. Just knocked my knee into the dresser.” Quinn leaned over Riley’s bed and kissed her sister on the top of the head. “Go back to sleep,” she whispered. She lowered herself onto the ground alongside Riley’s bed, watching the blanket rise and fall to the rhythm of her breathing.

  When she was convinced Riley had fallen back asleep, Quinn unwrapped the glowing bulb, which she had set on the floor beside her. On the walk home, she had discovered that the bulb was even heavier than she remembered from the cave, and she had decided that the weight must have something to do with the gravity in the other realm. That was the only explanation. The closer she got to home, the heavier the bulb became. She saw that the smooth, rounded edges had also gotten longer, less symmetrical. In fact, Quinn realized, the bulb was now shaped almost exactly like a human heart. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the pulse in her hand, tried to memorize the pattern. What she found filled her with a joy so overwhelming that gooseflesh covered her body. The strange shape was beating in sync with her own heart.

  Neither Meelie nor Aimee had known what Quinn was supposed to do once she brought the bulb to Riley, yet Quinn instinctively laid the object down in the space between Riley’s chest and arms so that Riley seemed to curl around the glowing orb. As Quinn watched, the red glow grew brighter and brighter until light filled the room. Butterfly whimpered and pushed his head under Quinn’s hand, pressing his ribs against her. Riley stirred, but didn’t open her eyes. Almost as quickly as the light had come, the glow faded to a pinprick. Quinn moved closer to Riley. She saw that the small wink of red light was coming from Riley’s chest, right above her heart. Most would probably mistake the spot for a freckle, but for Quinn the mark was a sudden, impossible point of origin. The beginning of a life without an expiration date. She lingered there, Butterfly tucked under her arm, tracing the sunlight that had started to spill over Riley’s face and upper body. In the living room, Quinn could hear her mother reshaping the pillows on the sofa, then the familiar whine of the cedar chest where she stored the throw blankets.

  * * *

  Jane eased down the lid of the cedar chest, so as not to wake the girls. She thought back to the night before, how she and Quinn had huddled on the couch, neither giving voice to the finality of the doctor’s words. He had tried to be discreet yesterday when he pulled Jane into the hall, but she had never hidden Riley’s condition from Quinn. Sometimes this seemed selfish, leaning on Quinn the way she did, but Jane reminded herself that Quinn had as much right as she did to know how quickly Riley was deteriorating. She knew Quinn well enough to know that, when the time came, she would try to carry Riley’s coffin on her own shoulders. She simply wouldn’t trust anyone else to bury her sister. Jane was beating back tears again. She tried not to fixate on the inevitable, but the thoughts crept in anytime her mind wandered.

  She walked into the kitchen and gathered ingredients for Belgian waffles, naming and renaming each item to push the words bury and coffin from her head. Cinnamon. Flour. Sugar. Salt. Baking powder. Eggs. Milk. Vegetable oil. Vanilla. Orange zest. She knew the recipe by heart. Belgian waffles were Riley’s favorite. Jane pulled strawberries and whipped cream from the refrigerator. She mixed the dry ingredients in a bowl until cinnamon tinted the flour a light-rust color, then cracked two eggs and let them drop into the mixture. She used extra vanilla and a spot of maple syrup, but the real secret was the orange peel, which gave the waffles just a hint of French Madeleine. When the iron was hot, she poured batter in and watched the color of the batter change. By the time she heard Quinn and Riley stirring in their room, she had a stack of crisp, golden-brown waffles waiting for them.

  “Girls, breakfast!” she shouted down the hall.

  “Coming!” Quinn hollered back.

  A few moments later, Quinn walked in. She looked exhausted, and Jane wondered again if she depended too much on Quinn to pick up the slack around the house.

  “Everything all right, Quinn?”

  “Yeah,” she yawned. “Just didn’t get much sleep.”

  “Well, dig in. Maybe we’ll go for some coffee in a little while.” Jane forced a smile. “Then the aquarium?”

  “What about Riley?” Quinn asked, dropping one of the waffles onto her plate.

  “I guess we’ll have to see how she feels this morning. Dr. Howe wants us to stop by again tomorrow, just to check in before you girls go b
ack to school. Today’s our last day to do something fun.”

  “Okay. Are we out of peanut butter and syrup?”

  “I don’t know. Check the pantry.”

  * * *

  Quinn went to the pantry and found both on the shelf. She wondered why her mom hadn’t pulled them out. Quinn got a butter knife from the utensil drawer and spread a thick layer of peanut butter over her waffle, then drizzled maple syrup on top. She didn’t remember when she had first acquired a taste for the odd mixture, but it was one of the few flavors Quinn didn’t tire of. She combined the two every chance she got: on toast, bagels, even with celery. She didn’t care for most sweets—they were too rich for her—but the peanut butter muted the syrup a bit, and she liked the way the toppings complemented one another.

  “You know your father used to do that.”

  “I know. Who do you think taught me?”

  “You were so young. I didn’t know you remembered.”

  “Mom, you’ve seen me eat waffles a hundred times.”

  “What’s taking Riley so long?” her mother wondered aloud, ignoring Quinn’s comment.

  “You want me to go get her out of bed?”

  “Too late!” Riley said, spinning into the room. She had her robe on, and she twirled in the center of the kitchen, laughing at the way the edges lifted into the air.

  “You seem to be feeling better,” Jane said.

  “Yep! What are we going to do today? Go to the park? See the butterflies?”