The Kingdom

by Jess Rothenberg

  His lips part in a small half smile, and I find I prefer that to the full smile; it feels more like a secret. I am no longer seeing Owen, the maintenance worker. I am seeing Owen, the person.

  “Well.” He sits back and gazes up at the sky. “I think my family is pretty beautiful.”

  Curiosity tugs my chest. “What are they like?”

  “My dad’s quiet, sort of the pensive type. He’s a teacher. My mom is, too, actually.”

  I lean in. Origin stories are my favorite. “How did they meet?” I ask.

  “My dad’s American, my mom’s Taiwanese. She and my dad met when he was there doing a semester in college.”

  In a flash, my head fills with colorful greetings and scripts I have stored in my memory for when I meet guests from this part of the world.

  Hello!

  你好！

  Welcome to my Kingdom!

  歡迎來到我的王國！

  “Zara’s Authentic Nigerian Beads™ are from Taiwan,” I point out. “I read it on the label in the Fairy Tale Boutique.”

  “Really?” He shakes his head. “That’s messed up.”

  “Was it exciting for you? Having two parents from such different cultures?”

  “Not really,” Owen replies. “I was pretty much the only Asian kid in my entire grade growing up. Which was sometimes tough.”

  I startle. I was aware that what people look like, that skin color, could be connected to where they are from, or where their parents are from—but it never occurred to me that it could matter. In here, my sisters and I all look different to represent “all the races of the world,” as the Kingdom brochures state. But we are simply designed to look the way we look. We were born in a lab. We’ve never experienced the cultures we’re supposed to represent.

  “We used to visit family in Taiwan every summer when I was little,” he says. “They lived in a town called Jiufen, and I always thought it was the most beautiful place. The lanterns, the hillside teahouses, the outdoor markets. My grandfather would always take us to fly kites shaped like fish. I loved the way they wiggled in the air.” He smiles, a little shyly. “I haven’t been back there in a while. I don’t know why that’s what I remember the most.” His eyes meet mine. “Those wiggling kite-fish.”

  I cannot look away. Like the kites, he has come alive, as if a wind has blown through him. “Us,” I say, remembering myself. “Who is us?”

  “Oh. Me and my sister, I guess.” Owen’s voice breaks a little and he looks away.

  “What is she like?” I want to make him smile. “Mine are always stealing my clothes. Does she steal yours?”

  But he doesn’t smile. “She’s—she was always a good kid. Plus I’m not sure they’d have been her style. She was more into dresses and princesses and … and Fantasists. Like you.”

  What I hear is: was.

  Suddenly, I understand something.

  “Owen?”

  He turns to look at me. In the darkness, his eyes remind me of the lagoon. Rippled, and deep, and hiding something terrible.

  “I know what it is like to lose a sister,” I tell him softly.

  My words make his eyes go wet at the corners.

  “Ana,” he whispers. He touches my hair again, and I know that I am happy, although it seems very similar to sad. I cannot imagine there being another definition than this. “You really are different, aren’t you?” he says quietly.

  Am I?

  I can’t answer that.

  It would be dangerous to.

  “Is it difficult for you?” Owen asks after a while. “Being here at the lagoon? After everything that happened with Nia?”

  Nia.

  It all comes swirling into me at once, as if no time has lapsed at all since that day: The pressure. The cold. The grip of fear wrapped around my throat. The reason I came here tonight in the first place.

  “Sometimes it’s like it never happened at all,” I say, finally. “Everybody acts the same. Nobody says her name. And every night when I lie down to rest, I tell myself that maybe she’ll be in her bed where she belongs when the lights come up. Maybe she’ll be there smiling at me. But she never is.”

  I study him in the moonlight and think about how odd it is that even when you think you’ve learned to predict all their words and behaviors, humans can still surprise you. I also think about how easy it can be to feel alone—like nobody understands—only to discover the opposite is true.

  “About your questions earlier,” Owen says, clearing his throat. “I—I looked into it, and I don’t know the answer. About why they took Nia away, or even where they took her for those ten weeks. All I know is, she wasn’t in the lab during that time, which was a surprise to me.”

  My head buzzes as I try to compute what he is saying. “So she just disappeared?”

  Owen shakes his head. “I honestly don’t know.”

  “But wherever she was, whatever they did, she came back changed. I’m sure of it,” I say. “Something was wrong, and whatever happened, it must have led to that day in the lagoon. She wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”

  Would she? How can I ever really know?

  “Maybe.”

  “Owen.” I search his eyes. “Can you help me find out?”

  “I can try.” And then, so quietly I almost miss it, he says, “I just—I don’t want to put you in any danger.”

  “Danger?” My system has gone cold. “Why would I be in any danger?”

  “I just mean, with everything that’s happened lately—Nia, the bear—I think it’s better for you to be careful.”

  “I keep trying to understand. I just keep wondering if maybe she was trying to tell us all something.”

  “Maybe,” he repeats. He is sitting so close to me now that I am overcome with his unique scent—salt, citrus, and something like the smoke from a distant flare. The kind they set off for warnings.

  Being here with him is dangerous. Being here with him is not routine.

  But then I see the way he is watching me, and I am reminded of a line from Romeo and Juliet.

  Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;

  Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes.

  All of a sudden, I have the wildest, most unexpected thought: that he might kiss me. Or that I might kiss him.

  His lips part slightly, as if he is hesitating. And then he says, “Or maybe … maybe she was just trying to escape.”

  38

  THE JULY OF THE SWIFT FOX

  FOURTEEN MONTHS BEFORE THE TRIAL

  I wake the next morning to the sound of children screaming.

  My eyes fly open before my mind can fully process my surroundings, details and memories fading in one at a time instead of all at once, as if I am lost in a fog.

  Owen’s voice. The quiet of the stands. The sensation of his hand on mine.

  Maybe she was trying to escape.

  Nia’s beautiful green eyes—cold, deliberate—gaze up at me from the depths.

  Come back, Ana. Don’t leave me here all alone.

  The scream of the tiger, as they loaded her into the truck.

  I sit up in bed, breathing hard.

  “Girls.” Mother bursts into our room. “Everybody, out of bed. We have to go.”

  I turn my head sharply toward the window and note the inky indigo of the predawn sky.

  Resting Hours.

  I feel my straps, secure at my sides.

  Bed.

  I taste a metallic film on my tongue.

  Thirst.

  I smell the familiar medicinal scent of antibacterial soap.

  Decontamination.

  The sounds are not screams, I realize.

  It’s a fire alarm.

  “But why?” Nadia whines while Mother unties her straps. “I need my beauty rest.”

  I shake my head. Nadia’s true colors always come out when her routine is disrupted.

  “Is there a fire?” Yumi asks. “Are we in danger?”

  “No.” Mother moves
briskly from bed to bed. “Merely a routine safety check. But we need to be quick about it. The Investors appreciate promptness.”

  I blink. I did not realize it was a VIP weekend.

  We make our way out of the Fantasist dormitory to the garden outside, where a small crowd of well-dressed men and women await us. Some of them I recognize; others I do not. It doesn’t really matter. To me, they all look the same. Bland, forgettable faces that morph into a singular expression when they see us in our robes.

  Desire.

  The Investors are like the male and female visitors who can, at times, become overly appreciative. For years, I did not typically spend a great deal of time thinking about them.

  I pull my robe tighter around me.

  But lately, I’ve come to hate them. “Good morning.” Zel bats her eyelashes at a man with thinning hair and a gray suit. “Did you dream about me?”

  “I always do,” the man replies, much to the amusement of the group.

  “As you can see,” Mother says, “we pride ourselves on safety, efficiency—”

  “—and discretion, I hope,” a second man adds, garnering even bigger laughs. I see he has his eye on Eve, though she does not appear to notice.

  Mother smiles and graciously concludes her safety presentation by inviting the Investors to join the seven of us this evening, along with the Supervisors, at a special banquet to be held in the palace’s rooftop garden on tower seven.

  “Will you be there?” the same man whispers to Eve, smiling at her in a way I find curious. “I so enjoyed your … company last night.”

  I straighten. Company? Last night?

  “What was he talking about?” I ask Eve, as soon as I am able, on our way back inside to Beautification.

  Her brow furrows. “Who?”

  “That man. Outside.”

  “I’m not sure.” Eve shakes her head. “I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

  I can’t figure out why, but something about her answer is unsatisfactory. If it weren’t against our programming, I’d think she was lying. “Where did you go last night?” I ask quietly, once our technicians have started on our pedicures. “Where did you go after evening fireworks?”

  Eve appears to hear me but when she looks at me, her eyes are unfocused and faraway. “I’m sorry.” She smiles. “What was the question?”

  * * *

  I spend the afternoon hoping I will run into Owen. Something is wrong with Eve, I am sure of it, and I think it has something to do with the Investors. If Owen knows anything—and if there is anything to know—he will tell me.

  But getting to him today will not be easy.

  Thanks to our VIP guests, the park’s staff is on particularly high alert. Everything grand feels infinitely grander: the meals, the parades, the costumes, the ice sculptures, the fireworks; even the silk tapestries hanging from the palace’s stone walls have been freshly laundered and pressed. Maintenance staff buzz around the park like worker bees, so quickly I hardly have time to properly scan their faces as they fly past. Tonight, the palace will host a grand farewell party. In the rooftop garden, so the Investors can see the fireworks. I nibble the inside of my cheek. Mother says the seven of us must attend.

  I do not want to go.

  Eventually, when I have signed so many autographs my hand feels on the brink of spasm, I make my way to the palace for afternoon tea—a daily event that Eve, as First Fantasist, always hosts, and the rest of us alternate in groups of three. I walk up the winding stone path toward the working wooden drawbridge, counting the thistles and daisies as I go, and find myself obsessing over a single word—a word that has plagued me ever since Owen uttered it last night at the lagoon.

  Escape.

  But it is not just the thought of Owen that has me replaying it.

  It’s that—once upon a time—Nia used this word, too.

  Inside the Briar Rose Parlor, an elegant room with plush velvet couches, a crackling Gothic fireplace, and a gorgeous living wall of wild roses and twisted brambles, I find Zara and Kaia singing at the harpsichord. I listen to them for several minutes, their soprano voices so light and sparkling several guests dab at their eyes. Before I know it, the old clock on the mantel chimes a quarter past the hour. And still, there is no sign of Eve.

  “Where is she?” I wonder aloud, glancing out the window toward the old town square, bustling and full of life. I quickly scan my wireless map to see if I can locate her in her usual preferred locations—the stables, the Story Train, the monorail—but my search comes up empty. I feel a jittery sensation buzzing inside my rib cage. After the way Eve behaved the night before last, the odd warning she gave me about Alice after Mother dimmed the lights, something about her being late to tea makes me uneasy.

  “You mean Eve?” Zara comes up beside me, the firelight illuminating the vibrant greens and golds of her Malawi head wrap. “She rides in the Heart Land rodeo on Sundays before teatime. I’m sure she’ll be here soon, she’s probably just a little behind schedule.” Zara smirks. “You know how she hates to get dirty.”

  “The mud will wash off but the memories will last a lifetime!” Kaia adds, nodding in agreement.

  I am not entirely sure what she means, but I think it was Kaia’s attempt to be clever.

  We set about performing our roles in the tea ceremony, Kaia making all the little girls in attendance giggle as she leads them in a song. I can’t help but think of Owen’s sister, wondering if she would have loved all this. Towers of fresh buttermilk biscuits, dishes of clotted cream fluffy as clouds, and bowls of strawberry jam as red as the fox’s blood dot the massive tea table, which is designed to look like something out of a nursery book. A hybrid goose waddles across the tabletop, followed by a trail of obedient little goslings, all trained to drop cubes of sugar into the guests’ teacups with their beaks.

  As I move from one guest to the next, teaching them which way is proper to turn the handle of their teacups, one of the younger girls pulls on my wrist. Blond hair. Tiny, perfect teeth.

  “This tea is not very hot,” she says.

  I bend down to her level. “That is true. Real tea can sometimes burn you; that is why we serve it at this temperature!”

  “Uh-huh. And the little birds are better off if they never fly,” the girl says solemnly.

  “What?” I pause. “The goslings, you mean?”

  “No, silly! Little birds are safer in the nest, as long as they don’t get too curious.”

  A flash of something hot pours through me, as if I’ve been scalded by the tea. “I’m … not sure I understand what you mean,” I reply, my mind racing forward and backward at once to try to come up with a reasonable explanation for what she is saying.

  “If the birds get too curious, they could fall,” she says, smiling widely, obviously pleased with herself.

  There is no other explanation for it: she’s speaking in our language. In the code of the sisters.

  “My dear,” I whisper. “Who taught you to say that?”

  The girl gasps and covers her mouth, her eyes wide. “I’m not supposed to say.”

  “Why not?” I ask. I reach for her hand, but the little girl’s father has already approached us.

  “That’s enough sugar for one day, sweetheart. Time to go!” He takes her by the elbow and she begins to follow him before running back to my side. She throws her arms around my waist and her smell envelops me, distinct as each and every human’s is: strawberries, chamomile, and magnolia.

  She whispers into my ear, “The mermaid told me.”

  And then she is running off, already disappearing with her father into the crowd beyond the parlor doors.

  A chill moves through me.

  I remember her, I realize, though she is a little bit older now. I met her on the monorail nearly one year ago. She’d asked to take a picture with me. My mind is able to recall the entire interaction:

  I quickly dip into a low curtsy. “Why, hello. What’s your name?”

  The girl grins,
revealing two rows of perfect, tiny teeth. “Clara.”

  Clara.

  In an instant, my head fills with music.

  Tchaikovsky.

  Then, a holographic interface flicks on before my eyes.

  A little girl in soft pink ballet slippers. Living dolls awakened in the light of the moon. An evil rat king. And the handsome prince who must somehow save them all.

  A red light blinks in my line of sight and I smile.

  On the monorail, my wireless signal is strong.

  “What a beautiful name,” I tell her. “That reminds me of my favorite ballet.”

  Clara. That is the girl’s name.

  The mermaid told me, she said.

  The mermaid. But there are no mermaids anymore.

  None since Nia.

  I am so occupied by Clara’s words that it is only when the staff have come to help clear away the remnants of biscuits and tea that I realize: Eve never showed up.

  “So.” Zara approaches me as the guests trickle out through the doors. She gives me that look; the look that means she wants information. “Where were you last night?”

  I feel my cheeks warm.

  Last night, I was at the lagoon with Owen.

  But I am not about to tell Zara that.

  Kaia maybe, but definitely not Zara.

  “I was watching the fireworks,” I tell her.

  Not a lie.

  But not the whole truth …

  “Why do you ask?” I say.

  Zara shrugs, jangling her bold silver necklace. “The Investors were asking about you, but we couldn’t locate you on the map.”

  An eerie feeling slithers into the pit of my stomach. “The Investors were asking about me? What did they want?”

  “They wanted you to join them for dinner,” Zara explains. “Along with Kaia, Zel, and Eve.”

  Kaia comes up to us and beams. “The more, the merrier!”

  I think of how tired Eve seemed earlier. Preoccupied. Cloudy.

  Or …

  What if those rumors aren’t rumors at all? What if the Supervisors really have erased Kaia’s memory again and again over the years? And if it’s happened to Kaia … could it not, then, have also happened to Eve?