by Jason Letts
“You know, the body does heal itself. I could just wait it out.”
Nora looked at the inflamed ankle and stuck out a finger to poke it.
“Oww!” Mira yelped, which made her think of who had caused this injury.
“I don’t know. It looks pretty bad. You might have to stay in bed for weeks or months for it to recover fully.”
Disappointed and annoyed, Mira gave in.
“Ok, fine. Let’s get this over with. This is the worst thing I’ve ever had to do.”
“I’ll put it in anything you want. How about your favorite, chocolate chip cookies?” Jeana asked.
“No, I think it would ruin them for me forever. Just throw it in some eggs or something. Might as well be something slimy and gross to begin with.”
Jeana returned a short time later with a plate of scrambled eggs. The hair poked out in all directions and the plate had a strange smell. Mira already felt she would be sick to her stomach.
“Ok, choke it down and you’ll be better in no time,” Nora cheered enthusiastically.
Mira raised a forkful of the yellow and brown concoction to her mouth. She had a horrid grimace, and having her parents and this strange woman watch her made it worse. Closing her eyes, she stuck the fork inside and immediately felt the hairs slide along the roof of her mouth. It tasted like old mayonnaise and rotten fish. She chomped down once and tried to swallow. The snaky hairs slithered down her throat.
“Yuck!”
“Don’t stop now. You’ve got to finish the plate.”
“I wouldn’t have to be doing this if I had something to defend myself with,” she said between mouthfuls. “And I’ve been thinking that the best thing would be if I didn’t have to fight at all and something else fought in my place.”
“You’ve got to be careful. Look at what happened to you yesterday,” Jeana said.
“I’m not any more fragile than anyone else. It’s just that they can inflict so much more damage. Some of them don’t even have powers that have anything to do with fighting, and so they’re in no better a position than I am. There’s this one girl, Mary, who doesn’t even know what her power is.”
“Well, what could you make that you could use?” Kevin asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t come up with anything good yet. A chemical probably wouldn’t be a good idea. There are so many reasons why conventional weapons like bows and arrows wouldn’t work. I need something that would prevent people from being able to hit me. I’ll have to think about it.”
By the time she finished the plate of hairy eggs, most of the pain had vanished. The healer left, Mira went back to sleep, and when she woke up later she found she could walk again. The next day, it seemed like the injury had never happened.
***
Mira went to school early Monday morning to repair the slant in her desk’s tabletop, but when she opened the door she was surprised to see that someone had already arrived. Vern sat at his desk, studying notes from Fortst’s lecture. Paying him no attention, she went to her work, but he turned around to look at her several times. Forcefully putting his pencil down, he got up from his desk and walked over to her. He stood over Mira, who had begun sawing a piece of wood.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“You’ve got to stop what you’re doing,” he said.
“It’s my desk now and I can fix it if I want,” she shot back.
“No, that’s not what I’m talking about. You’ve got to stop fighting with everybody. I heard some people from our class talking over the weekend and they are terrified of you. They say you’re acting like a bully.”
“Me? A bully?” Mira said, getting up. “I haven’t done anything to anyone that wasn’t provoked. I’m not going to let people walk all over me or push me around, no matter how much hair I have to eat. And if they think it’s fair to use their powers on me and unfair for me to do what I can to get them back then that’s their problem.”
“Look, you started that fight with Aoi. We all saw it. You can’t be doing that. At the bottom of it all, we have to depend on each other and work together. I’ve got to know that we’re all on board here, because I’m the one who is meant to lead us when it’s all said and done. We all know Aoi is too impulsive and too short-tempered, and that would be dangerous for all of us, so I need everyone’s support to make sure I remain our leader.”
His point rang true with her, and she grudgingly accepted that being mean worked exactly as well as being invisible in the class when it came to making friends. She wanted to pout that it would be too difficult to be nice, remain assertive, and succeed as a competitor, but she would have to find a way.
Mira also noticed how his words kept drifting back to himself no matter what he was talking about. He was serious and honest, deeply believing what he said, but it gave Mira a weird feeling too.
“I realize this isn’t easy for you because of your condition. But I know what you’re going through.” At this, a wave of anger swept over her, and the nerve he struck stung and twitched.
“Don’t you dare pretend you know what it’s like to be me! To just be so much less than everyone else, pray you never know what it’s like. You couldn’t even imagine it!”
Her shouting startled him and he took an awkward step back, bumping into another desk. His expression softened and now appeared more sincere.
“How can you say you know what it’s like to be me when you don’t even know what it’s like to be you? I know more about you than you do!”
A puzzled look came across Vern’s face.
“It’s gravity! Your power doesn’t attract things to you. Things fall to you, just like this,” she said. Mira grabbed a nail from the seat of her desk, held it out to Vern in her hand, and let it slip between her fingers and drop to the ground.
“That is your power, but here’s what you don’t know. Gravity doesn’t just pull things to the ground. Gravity exists between any two objects anywhere in the universe. So you are already connected to all of the things you try to move; your power is just to amplify what is already there.
“And there are other things too,” she continued. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that the farther something is away from you, the less your power works on it. Right? That’s because the gravitational force of an object diminishes over a greater distance. Did you know that how big something is determines how much force it has to attract other objects? I bet you didn’t. If you read any of Flip Widget’s Science Manuals, you would know there’s a relationship between gravity and mass.”
“I have no idea who that is,” Vern said, but Mira kept right on talking.
“Think of how big the sun has to be to hold the Earth in place, or how big the Earth has to be to hold the moon in place. I bet if you tried to use your power on something that was too big you would fall toward it rather than it falling toward you. So if you wanted to become more powerful, you would need to gain more mass, and than means gaining weight, stick boy.”
“Really?” Vern asked, contemplating her words and looking down at his thin frame.
“Yes. And now the only thing left to figure out is exactly how powerful you are now. Come with me,” she said, grabbing two apples from her lunch pack and dragging Vern outside.
“The gravitational force of the Earth is 9.8 meters per second squared. Accounting for acceleration, objects will fall half that in the first second.”
Mira set one of the apples on a tree stump and used her tape measure to measure 4.9 meters.
“You stand here,” she said, indicating a spot under a tree. Having him hold the tape measure to the ground, she climbed into the tree and found a spot that was 4.9 meter high.
“Ok, if you are able to catch that apple before this one hits the ground then you are more powerful than the Earth, equal is equal, and you’re less powerful if you catch that apple after this one hits the ground. Oh, and don’t stick your arm out to shorten the distance. I’ll count to three. Ready? One, Two, Three!”
Simu
ltaneously, Mira dropped her apple from up in the tree and Vern used his power on the other apple. She watched the one sink to the earth and the other move horizontally. Mira’s apple hit the ground first and a moment later Vern caught the other apple.
“Well, you’re not as powerful as the Earth,” she said, climbing out of the tree. She picked her apple up off the ground, and walked back into the schoolhouse.
“Don’t forget to give me that apple back. That’s my lunch,” she said.
Vern remained in the same spot with the apple in his hand for a long time.
Chapter 7: The Diamond Carafe
Weeks passed, the students trudged through thick piles of leaves to get to school, and their desks inched closer and closer to Dennis’s until they all clustered around it. The dropping temperatures and change of seasons left Fortst with fewer options for outdoor lessons, and so he got into the habit of spending great periods of time covering the important subject of history, his personal history.
“Back when I was your age, things were way, way different than they are now. We didn’t have big, organized wars, people trying to take over other people, not at all. Back in the day, great, solitary warriors roamed the landscape. We searched the vast unknown looking for something valuable we could bring home to our villages to prove how tough we were.
“Believe me, it wasn’t easy. The harsh environment offered little in the way of food. I’d go weeks without seeing another person. Often I’d have to carry all of my gear as I swum across lakes for days straight fighting monstrous aquatic life.”
“Tell us again how you had to eat fire for breakfast,” one student said.
“On occasion, it certainly wasn’t my favorite.”
“Could any of the sea monsters also fly?”
“Yes, there was one nasty critter that flapped his fins so hard he flew right up into the clouds, only to come back and attack me after I’d thought he was gone for good.”
“How many imaginary friends did you have?”
“Sometimes—wait, what?” Fortst finally caught on to the mocking tone of the students. “I’m not kidding around here! You have no idea what’s out there, and neither did we. We were just men out to prove there wasn’t nothing in the world we couldn’t handle. I’ll never forget those days, engaging in heated one-on-one duels from sun up to sundown, matching muscle against muscle, brain against brain, and power against power.
“My favorite nemesis, the only one who could bring me to the brink of defeat, was Arent. He was a muscular, cold-hearted guy, who probably hadn’t experienced enough joy in his life to fill a paper cup. He was from out west, and don’t I wish he’d stayed there. His grisly face showed up whenever I had a lead on something really great, or sometimes just to ruin my day.”
“Who was he?”
“Arent’s power was to send energy through his fingertips, and most things would end up exploding because of it. I’d heard from another wanderer that his village cast him out after he went on an angry rampage leveling most of the buildings to the ground. We’re talking that kind of serious destruction. If it weren’t for my lightning reflexes and all around incredible skill, I would have been toast from the get go, but as it was we were an even match.
“First time I saw him I was searching for a village to the east. Word got around that a previously unknown community existed, and I wanted the chance to trade with ‘em first. I’d been following some tracks that were leading me in the right direction. They were strange tracks that didn’t stay the same size or shape. Chased them down into a deep ravine with a stream flowing through it. All of a sudden the tracks end, and I look up to see a filthy man sitting on a rock.
“‘You’ve reached the end of the road,’ he said. I had a notion he knew more than he was letting on, so I told him he’d better start talking fast or he’d end up just like those tracks, finished. He had a funny way about him, and I noticed it then. Maybe it was just the thought of fighting, but all the emotion seemed to empty out of him, like a machine. Nobody upstairs. He started walking at me wiggling his fingertips and with this head-cocked-to-the-side dumbstruck stare. But that didn’t stop him from attacking me furiously and without mercy. We fought each other, trying to land a blow, but I didn’t even know his power until he grabbed a hold of my bag and suddenly all of my goods were blown apart on the ground.
“Next thing I knew those wiggly fingers were coming after me. He fought close, too close, and he managed to get a hand on my head. Surely it would have popped like a grape, but the rock I was leaning on crumbled to bits instead. I kicked him off me and had him down on the ground, but he grabbed a hold of my boot. Holes popped open in the leather and it burned my foot something awful. No matter how many times I hit him he didn’t seem to flinch.
“I ended up throwing him in the water, a place he obviously didn’t want to go, and his power had a strange effect. The water started bubbling and running real fast. It swept him clear out of sight. But the damage had already been done. He destroyed my goods and injured my foot, leaving me with no choice but to go back. It’s a shame, but that’s how it was in those days.”
***
“How much of all that is true?” Mira asked, tagging along with a few other students on the way to the outpost market.
“Bits and pieces make sense. That hidden group of people they used to look for ended up attacking us, and that’s how the war started. But I think he’s just saying most of it to make himself look good. There’s no way he won all those battles against ultra-powerful people nobody’s ever heard of,” Will said.
“Don’t you think if he’d lost any of them he wouldn’t be around to tell us about it?” Mary prodded.
“I guess, assuming they even happened in the first place. I’m not saying the guy hasn’t been in fights—he sure does like them—but he could at least be reasonable about telling it. Last time I checked I wasn’t five anymore,” Will replied.
“Oh yeah, and where do you check when you want to know how old you are?” Mira asked, looking him up and down.
“Right here!” Will replied, indicating some patchy facial hair with pride.
“It might look more manly if you evened it out with some of the hair from the afro growing in your armpits,” Mary teased.
The group reached the market in the outpost courtyard, splitting up to buy candy from different vendors. Mira felt comfortable here now. She no longer gawked at the different styles of clothing or hesitated to approach a merchant when she wanted to buy something. The coins in her pocket came from her mother, who decided to casually give her some money after catching wind that her classmates socialized at the market after school.
Mira always wondered at all of the different kinds of food available and how little of it her parents had ever brought home to her. Instead of always heading for the sugary snacks, Mira liked to walk around and pick out something she had never eaten before.
Walking around the market with a star-shaped fruit, she met up with the other students again. Their lips smacked with candy and chocolate.
“What are you going to do now?” she asked.
The other students looked at each other, all of them hesitant to speak. Mira thought for a second that they were going to ignore her, but then Will spoke up.
“We’re going to my house to play Makara,” he said.
“Makara? I’ve never heard of it.” The other boys and girls snickered, but they muffled the volume of it.
“Makara is a dice game. There are lots of dice with lots of different symbols. You roll the dice and then you have to do what they say.”
“What kind of things does it make you do?” Mira asked, already finding this game unappealing.
“It could seriously be anything. Do you remember the last time we played and I had to put on my little brother’s pants?” he said, turning to the others and laughing with them. “You could come if you wanted, I guess,” he said, turning back to Mira.
“Oh, you know, we’ve just got so much work to do, my famil
y and I, at our house…on our house,” she said, originally meaning to use studying as an excuse but then changing her mind realizing it wouldn’t work well.
They quickly said goodbye and left her standing in the market. She finished her fruit, which she found to be more interesting to look at than to eat, and started to walk home. On the way, she wondered if all of the students played the game she just heard about, if they played it all the time, and if she really needed to feel as uncomfortable about it as she did.
Her mind moved on to other things when she got home and found her mother rearranging the furniture in her bedroom. Rolling her eyes at the connection between her excuse and her mother’s requests for assistance, she got down to work moving chairs and dressers into the hallway so they could put down a new carpet.
“Was it really necessary for you to get a new carpet?” Mira whined, exhausted and working up a sweat while lifting the bed frame.
“Look at you, trying to deprive your mother of a few well-earned comforts,” Jeana shot back, equally exhausted. “I deprived myself for years of nice things because we could never think of a way to justify it showing up out of nowhere. That sure is gonna change.”
“I’m sorry having to trick me was such a hindrance in your life, mother,” Mira said, straining to work the frame through the door. They spent a few hours moving the furniture out, nailing down the new, white, plush carpet, dragging the furniture back in and arranging it. Careful not to let any of the heavy furnishings drop on her cushy socks, Mira shuffled around the room toting the furniture while her mother played interior decorator.
After hours passed, during which the sun had set and Kevin had resigned himself to eating dinner alone, Jeana and Mira admired their work. Candles gave the room a soft glow, and the floor now looked comfy enough to sleep on. Ready to head down to dinner, Mira broke for the door. When she reached for the metal handle, she got a nasty shock.
“Ouch!” she snapped, shaking her hand and taking a step back. Suddenly, she started jumping up and down, ecstatic. “That’s it! That’s it! Why didn’t I think of it before?” She threw open the door and ran down to the basement. Her mother followed her down, albeit at a much slower pace, finding her frantically going through her materials and tossing things onto the table.