Origin

by Jessica Khoury

  I am transfixed by the fire. The flames take shape, become people. Golden yellow Kaluakoa, rising and falling, giving birth and dying. Brief, fragile lives lived out in seeming obscurity, but now immortalized in Kapukiri’s words.

  “The Tapumiri were so powerful, their bodies did not grow old. But they grew old in their hearts, and when they had lived the fullness of their years, they too drank the tears of Miua and died. For it is said that the great river of lifeblood is not eternal, but must be renewed with blood, just as the great river of the jungle must be renewed with rain. This is why the gods decreed that so many must die for even one protector to be born—there cannot be birth without death. There cannot be life without the shedding of blood.

  “But one Tapumiri was born to the chief of the Kaluakoa, and he became chief when his father died. This was Izotaza, the Foolish One, for he desired to be the only Tapumiri in the world, and the most powerful. So he forbade the Elders from drinking the tears of the yresa, and he burned the valley where they grew. The Elders wept for his foolishness, but Izotaza would not be swayed, and no more protectors were born.”

  The fire burns low, the coals glowing like jaguar eyes. I cannot look away.

  “When the Maturo heard of this chief’s foolishness, they came over the mountain as never before, women and children too, and they all carried knives and poison darts. Izotaza was not powerful enough to stop them all by himself, and all of the Kaluakoa were killed.

  “Izotaza saw what his foolishness and pride had done, and he went to the valley where the yresa had been and wept for the death of the Kaluakoa. For three moons and three suns he wept, and when he could weep no more he looked up and saw that the valley was filled with yresa once more, grown from his tears. Izotaza drank and died.”

  Kapukiri pauses. It seems almost as if he’s fallen into a trance. He stares into the fire, his eyes glowing with reflected embers. He is as still as stone; not even his chest rises and falls. After a long moment like this, he goes on.

  “From then on the valley of yresa has been feared by the people of the world. The Ai’oa do not drink, because we are a strong people. We can defend ourselves against tribes like the Maturo, and we have no need of Miua’s tears.”

  He looks up, and his dark eyes, at once so young and so ancient, stare directly into mine, and I feel as if he’s looking at every moment of my life, seeing everything I’ve ever done and hearing every thought I ever had. His eyes hold mine, and they burn.

  “But we remember the Kaluakoa, the Ones Who Were but Are No More. And we remember that there must be a balance. No birth without death. No life without tears. What is taken from the world must be given back, and from him who takes and does not give back, who would tip the balance of the river, from him all will be taken. No one should live forever, but should give his blood to the river when the time comes so that tomorrow another may live. And so it goes.” He closes his eyes, and I exhale for the first time in several minutes, released from his spell. “And so it goes,” he whispers.

  “And so it goes,” repeat the villagers. “And so it goes.”

  “And so it goes,” whispers Eio.

  Silence falls.

  I feel the strangest sensation. It’s as if I’m not me at all. Instead, I’m a disembodied haze suspended in the air above the village, looking down at the cluster of Ai’oans circled around an ancient medicine man and pale, wide-eyed girl. I wonder what she is thinking, to look so still and white. I sense something dreadful has just happened to her, and she doesn’t yet understand it. I yearn, desperately, to glide up and away into the canopy of the rainforest, to leave this grim little scene behind me and search for happier company. But I’m pulled down again to the earth, and suddenly I am that pale girl sitting on a mat of leaves, and her sorrow is so deep and sharp that I double over and try to suck in breath, but nothing will enter my lungs. As if even the air despises me.

  “Pia?” A voice echoes through my head from across a vast distance. Uncle Antonio. I want to hide from him, but there is nowhere to go. I’m open and exposed, like a cell lying spread-eagle on a microscope slide. No place to run.

  “Pia, look at me.” Eio lifts my chin and finds my eyes with his own. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” I whisper. “Eio, take me somewhere where they can’t see me.”

  He looks confused, but he acts quickly. The Ai’oans let me go silently, and I avoid their eyes. Uncle Antonio reaches out to me, but I shake my head. I can’t face him right now. I need to get away.

  We walk into the trees and sink into the dirt at the base of a massive kapok.

  “Eio, I can’t breathe!”

  He pulls me close and lays my head on his shoulder. “Yes, you can, Pia. You’re breathing right now. Don’t you feel it?”

  “I can’t feel anything. Have you heard this story before?”

  Silence. Then, “Yes.”

  “Does it mean what I think it means?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. It’s just a story.”

  I lift my chin so that I can look up at him. “I don’t want to believe it. I don’t know if I can. But Uncle Antonio believes it, doesn’t he?” Of course he does. He said he has seen it with his own eyes: “I know what really goes on behind those lab doors.”

  “Eio, I have to go back.”

  “What? Why? He told me that if you heard the story, you would let me take you away.”

  I sit up and draw a deep breath, let it out. “I have to know if it’s true, Eio. I have to go back and see it with my own eyes. Like you said, maybe it’s just a story.…But I know how I can find out.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No, please don’t. If it is true—oh, Eio—if it’s true, then Uncle Antonio was right. About everything.” There is evil in Little Cam. “Stay here. Please. I know where to find you.”

  He tenses, but finally nods. “Will you be all right?”

  “I don’t know.” I stand and wait until my head stops spinning. “I really don’t know.”

  The walk back to Little Cam is surreal. The jungle might as well be made of paper and string, and me a puppet moving clumsily and unnaturally through it. I go quickly because I don’t want Uncle Antonio to catch up to me. I hope he’ll stay in Ai’oa a while longer.

  I have to put the story of the Kaluakoa to the test. If this legend, told around fires by ancient jungle medicine men, means what I think it means, then Uncle Antonio’s worst fears will be realized: the truth will destroy me. I already feel it at work, gnawing like a rat at the end of each thought passing through my head.

  Little Cam is nearly as dark as the jungle. I float through it like a ghost come back to haunt. Everyone seems to be asleep. No lights in the windows, no voices in the shadows. I’m alone, which is frightening. I’d rather be locked up in a B Labs cell than locked up in my head with only my own voice for company.

  I consider going straight to my bedroom, shutting the door, and crawling into my bed. Hiding under the blankets and never coming out. Simply locking myself in a room where nothing and no one—not any uncles or aunts, not Eio, and especially not the truth—can find me. But I don’t. I circle the glass house and go to the cinchona tree where Uncle Antonio found me crying and where I first realized that he was Eio’s father.

  It’s as dark as the night can be, but my elysia eyes can still pick out the leaves on the tree and the blades of grass as I kneel down. I run my hands slowly through the grass, each finger alert and sensitive, in case my eyes miss it. If it’s even here at all. I hope with every ounce of will I have that it’s not.

  After they drank the blood of the Elders, the people wept and mourned in the valley, and from their tears more yresa grew.

  The grass is already beaded with dew, and soon my hands and clothes are damp. Each blade is soft, unless my fingers brush its edge, and then it feels as sharp as a needle.

  For three moons and three suns he wept, and when he could weep no more he looked up and saw that the valley was filled with yresa once mor
e, grown from his tears.

  It is my eyes, and not my hands, that find it at the last moment, just before I give up and give in to relief. But relief is not to be mine, not tonight, because there it is, in the very spot where my tears fell. Dim and gray in the darkness, but unmistakable. The longer I stare, the more the colors appear. Purple petals tipped with gold, the orchid-like structure, the breathtaking beauty. I hadn’t expected a flower. I had expected a seedling, or even a bud, but not a fully developed blossom. Two days. It grew in only two days.

  What scientific explanation could Uncle Paolo possibly have for that?

  The spores that grow elysia are contained in the tears of immortals, in the DNA of people who have elysia absorbed into their genetic code. It makes a kind of sense, in a crazy, scientifically unprecedented way. All this time, and the scientists have never figured it out—and the “ignorant” Ai’oans have known all along.

  Back in my room, I lie on the bed and turn the flower over in my hands, careful not to tip it and pour the nectar out. Such beauty. Such terror. All contained in a mere blossom.

  I hear a soft knock on the door and Uncle Antonio’s voice. “Can I come in?”

  “Please,” I reply, just loudly enough for him to hear. “Go away. I need some time.”

  “Pia…” I can hear the frustration in his voice. “Okay. Fine. I’ll give you time. But you must know there’s isn’t much left.”

  “I know.”

  After he leaves, I study the flower again, feeling the velvet of the petals between my fingers.

  The catalyst isn’t a flower at all. It’s a person, or many people. It’s all in the story: one person drinks the deadly nectar of the elysia flower, and when they die, the others drink their blood. The lifeblood flowed from mother to daughter, from father to son, and every generation a protector was born. Five generations. It takes five generations of death to produce one “protector,” one Tapumiri. If nearly an entire village is passing on the genetic influence of elysia, it makes sense that about one child in every generation would be born immortal.

  Jaguar, mantis, moon. Kapukiri saw it in my eyes, in the swirling colors visible only by firelight.

  In this lovely, deadly flower, I hold the tears of Miua, which would claim the lives of many to give unending life to one.

  A mixture of elysia and the blood of a sacrificed human.

  That is the catalyst. That is Immortis. That is the secret I was so eager to unveil. The destiny I was so ready to commit myself to.

  That is my legacy.

  I’m shrinking. The world expands and convolutes around me, a monster that’s been sleeping all this time, finally awoken and ravenous to feed. I drop the flower to the floor, not caring if it spills, and curl into a ball on the blankets.

  The Wickham tests. Uncle Paolo always said that one day I would understand the necessity of them. Well, now I do. I had to kill Sneeze so that they would believe I could kill a human. Everyone who has come here has had to prove the same thing. We’re not a colony of scientists.

  We’re a colony of murderers.

  How many have died that I might live?

  And who has died that I might live?

  They must have had dozens of subjects—no, not subjects. Victims. Immortis must be fresh for each injection. They had to make so many injections: 32 original progenitors; 32 begot 16, 16 begot 8, 8 (minus 2 who ran away and drowned, leaving 1 odd one out) begot 2, and 2 begot me; 3 injections each per lifespan per generation.…

  “Stop!” I sit up straight in bed, forcing the numbers to dissolve, unable to continue. I’m panting, and there is a thin film of sweat encasing my body.

  The injection is scheduled for the day after tomorrow. If Kapukiri’s story is at all accurate—they need someone to be the victim. Someone to offer their life to the altar of immortality.

  I need to think. Need to clear away the panic and the fog and the horror that paralyzes my thoughts. I run to the bathroom and pour the nectar from the flower into the sink, then run water until every drop of the shimmering liquid is gone. My stomach lurches, and I cling to the edges of the sink as I gag, but nothing comes up.

  Terrified—I’ve never vomited in my life—I walk in circles around the room, do sit-ups and push-ups, jog in place. My blood pumps faster, washing away most of the hysteria. I force myself to swallow the rest. I have to have myself under control or I’ll only create a worse mess of things.

  I need a plan. And I need an ally.

  Finally, I sit on the floor in front of the window and face the jungle, doing all I can to keep the darkness at bay. It looms at the edges of my mind, threatening to swallow me whole if I fail to be diligent for even one moment.

  My hands slowly tear the elysia flower into tiny bits as I wait for morning.

  THIRTY

  As soon as I see sunlight overhead, I go looking for Uncle Antonio. I’m ready to sit with him and talk about what I heard. We need to lay everything out, view it from every angle. Find the cracks and the flaws in the formula. Heat it like water and see what hidden truths rise to the surface.

  But it’s Aunt Harriet, not Uncle Antonio, whom I find first. She has Alai on a leash outside the menagerie.

  “Pia, good heavens, what’s happened? You look like death!”

  Her unwitting turn of phrase sends a chill down my spine.

  I remember that Aunt Harriet is still in the dark. She deserves the truth. I owe her that much. I draw a deep, shaky breath. “I…I’ve learned a lot in the past few hours—things you really should know, Aunt Harriet.” I look around, and though we’re alone, I take her by the elbow and lead her behind the building so we’re hidden from anyone who might walk by. “You know how we’ve been wondering about the catalyst and what it could be?” I whisper.

  She nods, her hand tightening slightly on Alai’s leash.

  “Well…” I close my eyes and force the words from my lips. “I’ve discovered what it is.” Then the words rush out like the waterfall where Eio and Ami swim. I hold nothing back. I tell her about our argument in the jungle, Eio’s confessed feelings, my intention—and failure—to put down Sneeze, the trip to Falk’s Glen, and the legend of the Kaluakoa, which isn’t a legend at all. I end by telling her of the elysia grown from my tears.

  When I finish, she presses her hands to her mouth and stares at the ground. She stands this way for two, three, four minutes. I count the seconds in my head. Finally she looks up again with pupils constricted to pinpoints. “Are you—are you sure? Killing people, Pia?”

  “I don’t know!” I run my hand through my hair and start pacing to and fro in front of her. “All I know about elysia—besides the fact that I can grow it with my tears—is the Kaluakoa’s experience with it. Maybe it isn’t necessary to kill people to make Immortis. Maybe you can just draw a little blood, mix it with elysia.…We’re scientists. We have technology and medicine and rats to experiment on. Surely Falk found a way around the killing.” Except for my grandparents. I stop walking and look at her in desperation. “Right?”

  She bites her lip and squints at the ground for a moment before answering. “Well, where would the scientists get people to inject with elysia, anyway? They couldn’t be bringing in subjects all the time; someone on the outside would notice. It’s impractical. You’re right. There must be a different way.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “Surely there must be. If it’s true…then it’s worse than I imagined. I knew they were keeping secrets, but I never thought it would be like this.”

  “Uncle Antonio tried to warn me. He wanted me to run, but I didn’t believe him—well, I did, I just didn’t want to.”

  “There, now, Pia. Like you said, we don’t know anything yet.” She holds me at arm’s length and gives me a stern look. “You go find Antonio and get the rest of the story. Don’t jump to conclusions.”

  “Do you think it’s true?” I ask. “Do you think they’ve been killing people with elysia?”

  She shrugs slowly, but I see the fear in her eyes, and I know she
does. “Go,” she says. “Find Antonio.”

  I nod and kneel beside Alai, hand out to rub his ears. But he hisses and raises his hackles, eyes wild. Stunned, I pull my hand back and stare at him with dismay. “Alai?”

  He shakes his head roughly and stalks away, tail as straight as one of Eio’s arrows.

  “He’s just skittish,” Aunt Harriet says hurriedly, and she stares up at the sky. “It’s this weather. There’s a storm coming, and it’ll be a big one. I’ll take care of him. Find me later, Pia, and tell me what Antonio says. If the worst is true after all, well”—she inhales deeply—“you won’t be the only one running.”

  “Okay.” I watch Alai sadly, then, at Aunt Harriet’s insistence, leave them there. Try as I might, I can’t wash the image of Alai’s hostile glare from my eyes.

  I’m searching the gardens when I’m stopped by Uncle Jakob. When I see him, my mind goes blank. I force myself to breathe and remember that things can’t possibly be what they seem. I don’t know Uncle Jakob is a murderer. Not yet. There is still hope.

  “Pia, there you are!” He smiles and tucks the pencil he’s holding behind his ear. “We’ve decided to move the operation up a day. The others are waiting in the lab. It’s time to teach you about Immortis.” His smile fades a little, and a grimness creeps into his eyes. “Come with me.”

  I panic and nearly flee then and there—I’m not ready for this. Not yet!—then frantically reel my emotions into check. I need to talk to Uncle Antonio, need to explore the truth until there can’t possibly be any more secrets.

  But there’s no time. They’re waiting for me.

  Blindsided and completely unprepared, I follow Uncle Jakob through the courtyard and across the verandas to A Labs just as rain begins to pound the earth. The moment the door shuts behind us, thunder rattles the building.