by Amy Neftzger
Jovan stood with Maggie and carefully watched her. Most of the time he was quiet, but once in a while he asked questions about the safety and flammability of the chemicals she was mixing. After a while, he became genuinely interested in the work she was doing and seemed impressed that she had read so much on her own. Watching her was as good a way as any to stay busy, but he was also still concerned about the safety of everyone in the lab. After all, Maggie’s temperament was volatile enough, and if someone provoked her, she might get distracted and accidentally blow up the place. Jovan wanted to make sure she stayed on task and attentive.
At the other end of the lab table, Nicholas carefully poked the grains of colored powders into place using a glass wand. Once the rainbow was perfectly formed, he picked up the beaker with heat resistant tongs and began slowly heating the bottom over a Bunsen burner. Through his safety glasses, he watched the powders glowing and changing colors as the temperature increased, and he wondered if they would return to the same color when they cooled again. He glanced over at Jovan and Maggie working together, feeling grateful that Maggie would not be leaving the orphanage. He thought he would have given anything for Maggie to be able to make a miracle. He knew it was what she wanted, and maybe if she could accomplish it, it would be enough for her to remain safe no matter how bad she was with plants. He was distracted by this thought when he heard a slight popping noise and colored sparks flew out from his beaker as he felt a burst of heat. The noise caused everyone to look in his direction, and even Ms. White’s door cracked open slightly. The other children immediately turned back to their own projects, but the office door remained slightly ajar.
Nicholas quickly removed the beaker from the flame and looked at the molten blob that had formed within it. Individual colors swirled iridescently through dark blue lava along with streaks of gold. When the gold spiraled from one part of the beaker to another, it reminded Nicholas of a shooting star. He turned the hot beaker to watch the lump slide over the bottom of the glass and shine in a variety of colors. It was like looking at the Northern Lights, with shooting stars dancing across the night sky. It was breathtaking.
He was about to call Maggie over to see the beautiful mess he had made when the door to Ms. White’s office abruptly swung open with a bang that echoed against the stone walls of the lab. She rapidly clomped over to Nicholas, looking like a child trying out her mother’s heels for the first time. Her tall thin structure appeared to sway back and forth in the wind as she walked while her feet shuffled across the granite floor. She was wearing another green sweater with a single row of circles down the front. Nicholas thought that she looked like a pea pod in high heels.
“What have we here?” Ms. White asked sweetly as she pushed her glasses against her face. Nicholas didn’t know what to say because he didn’t know what he had. It was a blob. A colorful blob, but it was still a blob. Ms. White looked Nicholas in the eyes for a moment and studied his confusion enough to know that he was unaware of what he had done. “I’ll just take that for you,” she announced as she smiled like a daisy with teeth. She quickly grabbed another set of tongs and then placed them gently but firmly around the beaker. Nicholas was so confused that he hesitated before releasing the beaker from his grasp. He was jolted from his astonished state by Ms. White tugging the beaker away from him and repeatedly telling him to release it. When he realized the situation he immediately let go.
“What is it?” he asked softly as she was turning away from him.
“It looks like the beginning of a miracle,” she answered without looking back. “But it will need to be examined.” She shuffled noisily out of the lab and down the hall, leaving all the children in the lab staring in confusion at the door through which she had exited. Most of the children had not heard what she just said, so they were even more perplexed about why she had left with the beaker. Nicholas listened to the fading sound of her clumsy heels slapping against the stone floor and then he looked over at his friends. They were just as astonished as he was and didn’t know what to say. Maggie blinked and swallowed dramatically. She had obviously heard. Nicholas looked down at all the supplies left on the table and couldn’t remember exactly what he had put in that beaker. He thought that this moment should have felt like a big event, but it didn’t. He’d made his first miracle, but somehow Nicholas didn’t feel any different. In fact, he felt very much the same.
Chapter Ten
The Journey Continues
Silence and Megan were already awake when Kelsey opened her eyes to a very bright morning sky. The sun felt hot, and she knew she had slept later than she intended. She’d been up for most of the night thinking about whatever was following her and she had not slept well at all. In fact, she spent most of the night listening to the strange noises that rose and fell like the sounds of an excited crowd at a sporting event, sometimes sounding human and sometimes more like a monster. As she listened to the noise, most of Kelsey’s night had been spent worrying about what would happen if the thing caught up with her.
The thing was real. Or things. There could be more than one. At times it definitely sounded like a herd of something. Because of this, part of Kelsey’s night had been spent wondering what the monster looked like. When she finally did fall asleep, she had dreams of a snakelike creature with thousands of legs and large fangs chasing her off the cliff where the city in the rocks had been. Every time she started to plunge over the edge of the cliff, she tried to save herself with her knife by stabbing it into the face of the rocks. The blade only bounced off the hard surface as she swiftly tumbled downwards. Over and over she woke up abruptly. Then she would fall back asleep and dream almost the exact same dream. This happened about half a dozen times during the night and left Kelsey feeling unrested and uneasy.
At least now she didn’t hear the noises, and that helped to calm her a little. Perhaps the thing had lost their trail during the night. Kelsey still felt drowsy as she stood up and stretched her stiff body. She filled her lungs with the pine-scented air of the forest as she yawned and walked down to the river. She wanted to do something to take her mind off the thought of being followed.
“Good morning, Cuddles,” Megan greeted her in a cheerful voice when Kelsey reached the riverbank. Silence laughed without a sound.
“Don’t call me that,” Kelsey snapped. “I didn’t sleep well, and I’m not in the mood for teasing.” She paused to splash some cold water on her face. The chill momentarily stimulated her blood flow and revived her. “Besides,” she added, “I’m not the furry one. If anyone should be called Cuddles I think that would be you.” Silence again laughed without a sound.
“Now, that’s logic!” Megan exclaimed, clearly impressed.
“And aren’t you cats also supposed to be nocturnal and generally loners?” Kelsey’s voice had a note of challenge in it as she recalled what she’d learned at school about leopards.
“That’s a stereotype,” Megan said dismissively.
“A stereotype? What is that?”
“It’s something that may be generally true of some members a group, but not for everyone within the group. In other words, a stereotype is a huge general statement. For example, cats are generally loners, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be social at all. On the other hand, dogs are generally social, but again, that doesn’t mean that they don’t want to be alone once in a while. And humans are generally logical, but that also doesn’t mean that they can’t be stupid and impulsive once in a while. Some humans are stupid and impulsive all the time.”
“Like you said, those things are generally true,” Kelsey persisted. “So why aren’t they true for you?” She grinned smugly at Megan as she waited for a response.
“Because those things are true of the average member of the species. I am not the average snow leopard. If you must know, I am above average. Now please stop scaring away the fish. We have some breakfast to catch.” Kelsey wanted to argue, but decided instead to begin searching for firewood. She could hear Megan chuckle as she walk
ed away.
Soon enough there was a huge pile of fish, and they were eating breakfast. Megan had politely waited to devour her raw fish until Kelsey had finished cooking one of the salmon. While she waited. she poked at the fish with one of her forepaws.
“Silence tells me that you’re looking for the Orphanage of Miracles,” Megan announced as she suddenly ripped her fish into a bloody mess.
“How did he tell you that?” Kelsey was astonished that Silence had somehow managed to communicate this information.
“He talks with birds, you know. I saw him this morning.”
“Birds?” Kelsey asked. “What could be worth talking to a bird about? And how does he do it?”
“I don’t know. The only thing I’ve ever heard a bird say is ‘Don’t eat me! Don’t eat me!’” Megan continued shoving fish into her mouth.
“What did you say back?” Kelsey asked, thinking about what she would say to a bird if it could understand her.
“Nothing. I ate it.” Megan announced. “Quite honestly, the conversation was boring. You might think that listening to a pathetic little crow beg for his life would be interesting, but it’s not. Now, if the crow could tell me a good joke, maybe he would still be alive today.” Kelsey turned to Silence.
“How do you talk to birds?” she asked.
“He won’t answer you,” Megan replied in a taunting manner. “He can’t talk, remember?” Kelsey glared at her.
“Then how was he talking to you? You just said that he was talking with you.”
“He doesn’t use words. That’s the tricky part. You have to really listen whenever anyone talks without words,” the leopard explained as if this were something normal.
“What does he do? Read minds?”
“No,” Megan responded. “But that would be very cool,” she added as she turned her head and thought about it.
“Sometimes,” Kelsey paused to sigh. She wanted to argue but at the same time she felt exasperated and wanted to just give up. “Sometimes, I wonder if anything is real.”
“Yeah, that’s what the whole war is about.”
“I know people argue over whether or not there is a war.”
“There is a war,” Megan said. “It’s about what’s real. That’s why people argue about whether it exists,” Megan explained with a full mouth. Kelsey was about to argue when she noticed Silence nodding in agreement. She stopped to think about what Megan had just said. It felt as if two conversations were happening at once - one about Silence and whether he could talk and the other about the war. Kelsey felt lost in both of these, so she decided to tackle the issues one at a time.
“The war is real,” Kelsey stated with caution and braced herself for Megan’s response.
“Of course the war is real,” the leopard agreed with enthusiasm as she stuffed another fish into her mouth. She was eating them like snack crackers. Kelsey was momentarily taken aback.
“And there are people who like to argue over whether the war is real,” Kelsey continued. When Megan nodded in agreement, Kelsey proceeded. “And those people are real, also.”
“Absolutely,” Megan agreed yet again. Kelsey paused. If their thinking was in such alignment, why were they disagreeing over something? She replayed the conversation in her mind in case she missed something, but it seemed to be all there.
“Then what isn’t real?” she finally asked the leopard.
“A lot of things. That’s why we’re in a war. Most people don’t know what’s real and what’s not.”
“So we’re in a war over reality?” Kelsey said.
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“What’s the other way?”
“That we’re in a war over unreality.” Megan paused just long enough for this idea to settle in Kelsey’s mind. “Have you noticed that there are times when you witness something happening and another person who was there and saw exactly the same thing tells a completely different story? It’s because you’ve seen the event differently.”
“One of us has seen reality and the other has seen unreality,” Kelsey reasoned.
“Or you’ve both seen different unrealities. It’s entirely possible.”
“How does this happen?” Kelsey asked. “When did it happen? Has it always been this way?”
“It all started a long time ago when there was a sorcerer who wanted to take over the kingdom,” Megan said after she finished chewing and swallowing a fish tail. “Our king was too strong, and he couldn’t be overpowered, which only made the sorcerer angrier. So the sorcerer put a spell on the kingdom that distorted reality, hoping that he could fool the people into honoring him as their king. The sorcerer’s spell makes it difficult for the people within the kingdom to see clearly, and perceptions are altered. The result is a form of chaos where no one sees the same reality.”
“My father told me this story,” Kelsey remarked with hesitation. “I thought it was a myth.”
“All myths have a basis in reality. That’s why the stories endure over time. So whenever you hear a myth, it stands to reason that there is some element of truth if the story has been told over and over for so many years. Truth endures this way.”
“So this is why we’re at war?” Kelsey was thinking aloud to herself. “Because perceptions have been altered?”
“We’re at war because the king is fighting to free his people from this spell,” Megan explained. “However, the spell is the reason we argue over whether or not the war exists.”
“Do animals know what’s real?”
“Some of them. Just like some people. The problem is that people who can’t see what is real also don’t know what isn’t real. They don’t have a good reference for reality. Just like you will never know what you smell like because you can’t get away from your own smell in order to know the difference. No matter what you smell, it will always have your own scent on it because you’re there smelling it. You can’t get away from your own experience. You always become part of it.”
Megan stopped speaking because Kelsey wanted to shake the confusion out of her own head, and yet for some reason she knew that all this baffling logic made sense. She could find nothing in her own experience to contradict it, anyway. And the more she thought about it, she realized that it did explain all the arguments over the war.
“You’re not an ordinary leopard,” Kelsey remarked quietly. She still wasn’t sure if she understood it all, but Megan had at least helped her to understand the complexity of the situation.
“First of all, I’m a snow leopard,” Megan said with emphasis. “Secondly, I already told you that I was above average.” She slowly licked the top of her paw to clean it. Kelsey stared back silently. Even if she really believed it was true, she wouldn’t say so. She had already said that this was no ordinary leopard. She just didn’t know how extraordinary Megan could be.
“We should be going,” Kelsey finally said when she couldn’t take the silence any longer.
“Yes, we should,” Megan agreed. “I’ll get the boy.”
“What? You’re going with us?”
“I’m going in the same direction, and Silence invited me. He said I make a good fishing partner, and he wants to learn how to hunt, also.” Kelsey was offended that Silence would confide in the leopard instead of her. After all, she was his protector and benefactor. What’s more, Megan certainly couldn’t use a knife properly since she didn’t have thumbs.
“I can do the hunting,” Kelsey announced defiantly. “I will do all the hunting.”
“Really?” Megan asked with a hint of sarcasm. “I’ve never seen you pounce on anything, and you don’t have strong enough fangs for it. Show me your teeth.” Kelsey immediately pulled her knife out of the sheath at her side and held it up. When it caught the sunlight, it shimmered brilliantly, leaving both of them breathless.
“That is a very nice fang!” Megan spoke slowly and with emphasis. Her voice had lost the sarcastic tone. “It’s wonderful.”
“Thank you,” Kelsey
replied proudly. “Silence helped me pick it out.”
“The kid has taste.”
“At least we agree on that much.”
“I respect you for the size and beauty of your fang,” Megan replied solemnly. Then she bared her teeth in what appeared to be a half smile and a half snarl. It took Kelsey a few moments to realize that she was presenting her fangs for inspection.
“Your fangs are very clean,” Kelsey remarked hesitantly, not knowing what to say. This must have been some sort of leopard or talking cat ritual. As Megan continued to stand there with the strange snarling smile on her face, Kelsey quickly realized what she needed to add. “They also look like they could stop the swiftest animals and pierce the toughest flesh. And you have two of them. I respect you for the quantity and power of your fangs.”
Satisfied with the compliment, Megan strutted away and came back with Silence. His satchel was packed, and they were ready to move on.
“Where are you going, exactly?” Kelsey asked the leopard.
“I’m not sure yet. I’m meeting a friend.”