Eyes Love & Water

by Pamela Foland

  “Containment breach, dissolution twenty seconds.” Miranda slammed the emergency release still the hatch didn't open. Miranda laid the seat all the way back to get at the hatch.

  “Containment breach, dissolution fifteen seconds.” She pried and pounded at it until a panel flipped open revealing the manual release.

  “Ten seconds, nine, eight,” Miranda pulled the release and the hatch came ajar, “Seven, six . . . “ She threw herself at the hatch and came tumbling out of the pod and down the leeward side of a sand dune. Behind her, the pod glowed, white-hot, five seconds later it disappeared, leaving a glass cavity melted into the dune.

  Blood oozed from her scalp and Miranda fought not to black out. She turned to look back at her all too close call, her vision blurred and the world spun rapidly. She tried to stand but all she could do was fall back into the sand. Miranda laid in the sand for a long while trying to rub two thoughts together. She could feel the sun crisping what little flesh her uniform left bare. Wearing black, in the heat, Miranda knew it wouldn't take long to become dehydrated, but she could do nothing about it. Every time she attempted to move, she came close to blacking out. It came to her after a while that she should try to find shelter. A while later she recognized the shade in the melt glass cave as shelter.

  She tried to stand again but her vision blurred and she got no further than a crawling position. Pushing with her feet and clawing at the sand with her hands, Miranda got a few feet up the side of the dune before tumbling back down and landing in a flat sprawl in the trough between dunes. Her head hurt too much to try again. She stared up into the brightly lit sky, while the sun slid across until it hung almost directly on top of her. She felt grit and dust in her throat as she tried to swallow what little saliva she had. Unsure of how long she could survive this, Miranda took another deep inhalation of the dry and faintly fragrant air.

  “That isn't a good idea!” A woman yelled from the top of a dune, “Do you think you could hold your breath until I get to you? Not that it'll help. You've already been thoroughly exposed.”

  Miranda wobbled up into a sitting position and started to ask why but dizziness soon knocked her flat again. She did her best to follow the woman's suggestion while panting from the exertion. Finally, she managed a weak, “Why?” By then the woman and some kind of shaggy, horse-sized, four-legged, bird-thing had made their way down the dune toward her.

  “Because, Little One, you are in no condition to be exposing yourself like that. Can you stand?” the woman asked placing a primitive filter mask over Miranda's nose and mouth.

  Miranda nodded and sat again, but she could remain upright no longer than the last time. Falling back and landing in the sand, Miranda's vision folded in on itself. This time with help so near, she didn't fight it as things faded out.

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  When she heard the whispers, of the voices in her mind, on her breath she knew she had gone insane. She could no longer remember which of the voices heard within her mind was her own. They had brought her here because of those voices, because they meant she was mad. Then the voices had been pity, “Poor child, only a monster would do that to a child!” Now, here the voices were madness.

  In the dark of the night, the voices became visions of madness. The spiders, the snakes, the demons and dragons, all forms of nightmares attacked her whether she slept or waked. She didn't sleep. No end to the torture came, no rest. Was it memory or some insane hallucination? The blood so much blood, flowed deep life from the heart of the stranger. She had seen too often in her mind that stranger's death mask of anguish. The demonic face that drew the blood should be hallucination. Memory, firm memory of scaly inhuman flesh reaching for her, wouldn't leave her. How could she hallucinate such in such detail?

  Months, hours, years, moments, true madness is eternal. Too far into the nameless depths of insanity to even count the passing of the sun or the trays of food shoved beneath the door, she had no way to know how much time had passed since she had become lost. No way, except perhaps to count the pages full of words and drawings scattered like a carpet over the institutional linoleum. With little more than crayon lines on paper she had cried out in wild ravings at the things of her mind.

  Mid-scrawling, a foreign noise broke her solitude, the sound of the lock being turned, the door opening. No, not foreign, the door opened daily, daily the man came, the doctor. Fear blinded her, made her a mute ball on the floor, unresisting. His thoughts were strong, were strange, were of the cause of her demons, and were of the cure. He always came and spoke. His mouth denied the voices, and demanded she deny them.

  He told her what she knew, “Sane people don't hear voices. They don't rave of monsters or demons ravaging and murdering teenage girls.” Then he would make her tell him about that night. He would make her talk, and talk. Then he would deny, and explain away every word. “Some people's minds make up stories to protect themselves. Try to remember what really happened. Then we can move past this.”

  She lay there rolled up in her protective ball. If he wouldn't leave her alone and let her fall back into the other voices, ever so much better than remembering that night, then she would make him work to get her attention. She never expected the touch of a soft feminine hand on her bare arm. She expected, even less, the sudden silence of mind that came with that touch.

  “They tell me your name is Erica. Erica, I have come to help you,” The voice was lyrical, soothing. It fell on her ears like the sweet, cool pleasure of a summertime popsicle. “Erica, let me help you.”

  Erica rolled the name, her name, around in her mind. It fit. With it, she drew the pieces of herself back together. She couldn't keep her muscles from relaxing. The new stranger came bearing the first wisp of sanity Erica had tasted in who knew how long, the first moment of silence in longer. Words of thanks flowed to Erica's tongue, but stalled there as sleep finally fell upon her like a heavy weight.

  The last thing Erica heard was the stranger's voice, “Dr. Evanson, I'll be staying here with her until she wakes up. Could you bring me some coffee, please?”

  Erica awoke disoriented, the room was familiar, but her place in it wasn't. The stranger had replaced the mattress on its frame while Erica slept, and Erica lay on it with the blankets tucked in around her chin. In her mind, the magical silence still prevailed, and in it, Erica recognized her own voice after so long.

  “Good morning, Erica, or should I say good afternoon. You've been asleep for hours. I'll take it that it has been a long time since you have slept,” Half paranoid at the breaking of the silence Erica flinched upright to see the stranger sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed. “It is all right. I am here. I am Real. My name is Angela, and everything is going to be all right.”

  “It, it's so quiet.”

  “I know. So, quiet, you can hear yourself think.” Erica saw the corners of Angela's mouth turn with the tiniest hint of a smirk. “I can help you think around the voices.” The voices existed. Angela didn't deny the voices. She wasn't explaining them away. “Yes, there are voices. I hear them too,” Angela's face was suddenly deadpan, and her lips weren't moving.

  Angela's voice had the same echoing quality as those other voices. She couldn't have spoken. Erica had been watching. From the edges of the room, Erica felt the voices creeping back toward her. Like a weight, they fell on her, and she began to fall into the maddening voices again.

  “Erica, listen to me,” Angela's voice, the real one reached Erica like a hand passed over a cliff. Erica snatched at it. “Erica, You can push them away. Shove them into the corner of your mind, like, like these pages!” Angela leapt up and began kicking all of the piles of paper toward the corner of the room.

  There were too many voices. They were too strong. Erica's voice seemed so weak compared to all of them. Where were her crayons?

  “Erica, come help me shove these into the corner!” The voice was so urgent and so real Erica rose from the bed and began kicking at the paper with the
stranger, with Angela.

  With each kick, the voices became softer again. Erica heard her own voice shouting, kicking the others away. As they got quieter so did she, quieter not weaker. She just didn't need to shout anymore. Soon there was quiet. Erica noticed Angela beside her. They stopped kicking. There they stood in the corner both panting, the rhythmic breath, a symbol of reality. Angela was so real standing there red faced, supportive hand on the wall, sides heaving. Erica imagined she looked the same.

  “Congratulations, we've made some progress. For now, if they try to come back, we'll kick them into the corner,” In the near silence Angela's voice boomed.

  Ten more times before Erica fell asleep again, they kicked the papers into the corner. Each time they kicked for less time, and it was longer before they had to kick. Erica dreamed of kicking, kicking the spiders, the snakes, the demons and dragons. They ran. Erica slept, rested. Maybe, she wasn't crazy, but “sane people don't hear voices.” Erica kicked him too, that man, that Dr. Evanson.

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  Ben shoved his plate away and took another long gulp of iced tea. He was full. It was the best lasagna he had ever eaten in a Chinese restaurant. Actually, it was the best he had ever eaten, period.

  “Good?” Daniel asked wiping the corners of his mouth.

  “The best,” Ben began. He stopped when he realized that Daniel already knew what he thought.

  “You would be amazed at how long it can take for some to come across that notion. Still, it is custom and courtesy around here to ask, even if not out loud,” Daniel said, lowering the napkin and revealing his lips weren't moving, “Besides it won’t always be possible to read you. You are already beginning to intuit the proper method of shielding your mind.”

  “So how does this work?” Ben asked tapping his ear.

  “It amplifies the thought patterns of others, so that your mind can pick them up. Your mind then filters and interprets the signal and you 'hear' it. It can get kind of cool when people are talking too,” Daniel said verbally, which ended up sounding like an echo of his thoughts, “Well, I think so. Some people just get annoyed.”

  “That is especially weird.”

  “You really are taking this whole thing pretty well. It's kind of uncommon.” Daniel folded his napkin and laid it across his plate.

  “You mean despite the fainting.”

  “If you will excuse the uninvited intrusion, it seemed less like a not-dealing-with-a-situation faint and more like a spatial-disorientation faint. I thought I felt you feel the motion through space-time. Did I?” Daniel asked, offering Ben a sincere sensation of ignorance to the answer.

  “Sort of, one minute it was like I knew where I was, with every cell in my body. The next I knew I wasn't there anymore, then I was here.” The words fell flat, inadequate for the purpose, yet in saying them Ben dredged up the memory and offered that to Daniel as well.

  Daniel nearly exploded with excitement; other diners in the restaurant all dropped their utensils and turned towards him. “Do you know what that means?”

  “No, what?” Ben answered, embarrassed enough for both of them.

  “Talent my dear fellow, everything else can be learned, but you really must be born with Talent,” Daniel stood abruptly rubbing his hands together, “We should go see Gene about a gene scan, a physical, and a psytest. Then you can start training in earnest.”

  “Gene for a gene scan, curiouser and curiouser,” Ben mumbled following Daniel as he hustled back out towards the cart. “Hey, Daniel, what about lunch.”

  “We just ate it.”

  “Yeah, but what about the bill.”

  “What bill?” Daniel shrugged, “Bennie when are you going to learn that, to paraphrase the media of your world, you ain't in Kansas anymore Toto.”

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  Miranda awoke somewhere cool. Her mouth and throat ached for lack of water. She could feel the hard swollen lumps of her salivary glands. All she could think of was water. Her eyes opened and fastened on a cup right in front of her face. She began to reach for it only to discover her hands bound together at the wrists. It took a surprisingly long moment to coordinate both arms to pick the cup up, but nowhere near as long to realize that, it was empty

  “Sand, sand, everywhere and not a drop to drink,” Miranda mumbled turning the cup upside down with both hands.

  “You must be feeling better you're only talking half nonsense now.” The woman quipped from across the room. She stood and brought her waterskin to fill Miranda's cup.

  Miranda lifted the cup to her mouth and drank greedily. When she lowered it, the woman filled it again. Miranda lifted it again, this time sipping slowly. “My name is Miranda.”

  The woman returned the waterskin to its place, and settled herself back near the small stove. She acted as though she hadn't heard Miranda. Then suddenly the woman spoke, “I know, though it doesn't matter much. You can probably tell with whom I'm talking. If I'm not using some form of dialectical gibberish, it must be you.”

  Miranda sat quietly for a few moments, she didn't have much experience with conversation, but she had enough that she was irritated when the woman didn't offer her name. “What's your name?”

  Again the woman was slow to reply, “I don't see how that matters.” She stirred a pot sitting on the tiny stove with violent determination.

  “What am I supposed to call you?”

  Miranda was shocked when the woman immediately snapped back with an answer, “What have you been calling me? Think really hard about it! How often in a two-person conversation, do you use names anyway? If it comes down to it, you can call my gullyshrew Itona and the berachi outside Petrigrine, otherwise I'll assume you're talking to me!”

  The woman's words drove Miranda into a long brooding silence. She hadn't had enough conversational experience to know if the woman was right or not, and wasn't sure if she wanted to continue in the attempt if this was how it worked out. Miranda tried to get comfortable, but with her wrists and ankles tied, it was difficult, her shoulders hurt. She watched the woman stir the pot. Miranda felt tired just watching. In the back of her mind Miranda went around in circles, “Don't you like names?”

  The woman smiled, frowned and shifted the pot off the stove. “I used to flash my name around like a badge. I used to be proud of all the people I'd helped, the lives I'd saved. Pride is a foolish sin, and a dangerous one, when someone places herself between innocents and . . . “ The woman grabbed a handful of dried herbs and tossed them into the gruel. As she stirred in the herbs, her eyes surveyed the room checking everything but seeing nothing.

  “The innocents and what?” Miranda leaned forward, surprised and intrigued.

  “The darkness.”

  “If you aren't working for the Dark One, why am I tied up?” Miranda held up her bound wrists, her hands cupped in a supplicatory gesture.

  The woman pulled out a long knife with a decorated hilt. She brandished it at Miranda for an instant before using it to cut the cord, first around her wrists then her ankles. “That was for your protection as much as mine.”

  “Strange idea of protection,” Miranda rubbed her wrists and checked for rope burn.

  The woman shoved a reflective metal bowl, with a flat bottom, at Miranda. “Look at your eyes.”

  Miranda stared into the bottom of the bowl, at her eyes, bright robin's egg blue in the middle, blue like Ben's eyes. She looked deeply into her eyes and saw some of what she saw in Ben's eyes, but nothing threatening. Miranda looked back at the woman “So?”

  “See anything different about them?” Miranda looked again. A few violet streaks ran through the blue; those might be new. “That violet to them is a symptom of Desert Possession. It would have probably killed you, but you would have gotten violent and run off first. In fact you tried to.”

  “But I'm okay now?”

  “Look's like.”

  “And, you aren't going to hand me over to the Dark
One?”

  “I don't know, are you evil?”

  Miranda stared into the bowl and examined her eyes again. “What’s the difference, you know, between good and evil?”

  The woman silently dished herself a bowl full of gruel, and then held a ladle full out toward Miranda. “All I know is that good people are the ones that will give you the last of their water, and evil people are more likely to beat you, stab you, and take all the water you have. Which kind of person are you?” The woman finally answered.

  “Personally I don't want anything to do with water. I don't have any and don't want any.”

  “Everyone either needs water or has water. Question is what would you do with it,” The woman said. Miranda put down the bowl and picked up her cup. It was still half full of water. She reached out and set it down an arm's length away.

  The woman smiled, “I guess, that would make you a giver not a taker.”

  Miranda shrugged sheepishly. She picked up the bowl again and held it beneath the outstretched ladle. The woman gave a grunt and finally dropped the ladle full of gruel into Miranda’s bowl, “It won’t assault your colon though I can't say the same for your taste buds.”

  Miranda crossed her legs and sat the bowl on her ankles. Gingerly she dipped her fingertips in to lift some gruel into her mouth. The taste was foul like something from the bottom of a compost heap. She couldn't keep her face from screwing up into a disgusted expression.

  “I did try to warn you. There are some healing herbs in there to help adapt your body chemistry to avoid the desert spores,” The woman shoveled the gruel in her mouth rapidly, “The key is to shovel it in fast as possible to avoid the aftertaste.”