CHAPTER I
DISCOVERY DAY
Michael took a
deep breath as he watched another seizure wrack his mother’s body. It was a
small one, but he dutifully laid her on the floor just in case it became
violent. He stood nearby as she twisted and shivered. He had to remind himself
not to interfere— to let the attack run its course. The seizures always caught
him by surprise, but the procedure to deal with them had become almost banal—
lay her on the floor, make sure she didn’t hit her head, then wait until it
was over.
After a few
moments, she lay still and stared vacantly at the ceiling. Michael helped her
sit up. He wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her to a chair at the
dining table. Her wiry brown hair tickled his ear. It was the same color and
curliness as his, but no amount of combing seemed to keep it in place anymore.
He could barely recognize his own face in her sallow cheeks and sunken eyes. He
looked more like his father anyway, with his golden skin, green eyes, and broad
shoulders. His mother, meanwhile, had grown thin and frail, but when he lifted
her up, her limp body felt as heavy as a sack of wet dough.
“Are you okay?”
Michael asked as he arranged her in her chair. Her dull, dark eyes stared ahead
blankly.
“Mom, do you
want to eat?” he asked, although he didn’t actually expect a reply. It had been
years since she had articulated a full sentence, but he didn’t like treating
her like a vegetable. Once in a while she was lucid enough to grunt a response,
but this time, she did not even move.
“I’m going to
make dinner now,” Michael told her, tentatively leaving her, hoping she would
not fall or have another seizure the moment he turned away.
He went to the
kitchen sink where he had only just finished washing the vegetables when he had been interrupted
by her collapse. He sliced the sweet, white ghost carrots— a summertime
favorite of his town— into big chunks and put them in a pot with the other
vegetables. He covered them with stock and turned up the heat on the stove. The
pilot clicked a few times, but there was no whoosh of flames springing to life.
Michael grumbled at the malfunctioning burner as he set the pot aside and
lifted the enameled stove lid. The
firebox was out. The small carton of rocks that usually glowed red with
potential heat were instead an ashen grey.
Michael had
boiled some water for tea that morning, so he knew that they should be working.
Usually when they died, they went out slowly, becoming weaker over the course
of a few days, but these had just inexplicably lost their oomph. He wondered if
he had accidentally spilled something on them. Regardless, he would have to
light them, but he didn’t hunt for matches. Instead, he took it as a chance to
practice his Moving.
He set the
kitchen timer for five minutes, rolled up his sleeves and pointed his finger at
the small cluster of stones. He stared at them, or actually focused his eyes on
an imaginary point beyond them. He would make them catch fire. According to the
books his uncle Sefu gave him, he should not hope, need, want, or pray for the
fire to manifest. He had to imagine it was already there. Anything less merely
affirmed his lack of will. It was a small nuance, but made all the difference.
Michael focused
his thoughts like a beam of sunlight, pushing all foggy doubt out of his mind
that what he was doing was impossible. His mind wandered occasionally, but he
kept bringing it back to its goal, to the reality that he required— that there
was already fire in the firebox. His concentration reached a frenzied tension
and his vision blurred.
Unable to hold
his thoughts anymore, Michael relaxed his stare. His vision re-focused and to
his satisfied surprise, a small spray of sparks issued from his fingertip. It
surrounded and warmed the firestones. Without stopping his Moving, he checked
the kitchen timer. Two minutes had elapsed. It was not a personal record, but
Michael acknowledged that there was at least merit in consistency.
The dull stones
crackled, catching fire on their own. Michael ceased his Moving, lowered the
stove top, and replaced the soup on the revived flame. While waiting for it to
boil, he chopped garlic and parsley. Even though his mother was about as
responsive as the firebox was a moment ago, he did his best to make her meals
taste good. He hoped that a well-cared for meal was somehow healing or
imperceptibly uplifting to her spirit.
Michael added
some herbs and salt, and when the vegetables had softened, he turned off the
flame and crushed the whole concoction with a sturdy slotted spoon. It was kind
of a shame to mash it up, but lengthy chewing was beyond his mother’s ability.
“Here you go,”
he said, serving her a bowl. “Eat it while it’s
hot.”
At first it
seemed she hadn’t heard, but a ghost of awareness flitted across her face. She dipped a spoon into the beige
puree and after a slow moment, dragged it to her lips. Michael watched her
mechanically eat for a while. He listened to the clumsy clink of the metal
spoon against her teeth and the sloppy glug of her throat. Once he was sure
that she was underway, he got up to wash the dishes and perhaps find a moment
to pour himself a bowl. But before he took a step, he heard the rustling of
packs at the front door. His father was home.
Michael
hurriedly opened the door for him. His father was still rifling through his
pocket for his keys. “Ah, thanks!” his dad, Simon, smiled through crow’s feet
and a thick salt and pepper beard.
Michael took his
father’s bags.
His dad stepped
into their living room, shutting the door behind him. “So?” he asked as he
peeled off his coat and slung it over the sofa. “Is your mom okay?”
Michael
described her recent seizure and added with measured assurance, “I think she’s
fine now.”
“Was that the
only one?” his dad asked, but did not sound particularly concerned. “No, she
had a series of them a couple hours after you left. She’s been mostly
absent since
then. I had to stay around the house the past couple of days keeping an eye on
her.”
His dad nodded
aloofly and patted his belly, which along with a slope to his shoulders, had
grown more pronounced since his wife took ill. He strode over to the stove and
ladled himself a bowl of soup. “Is this all there is?” he asked disappointedly.
“Um,” Michael
began, a little frustrated by his father’s dissatisfaction, “I think there’s
some phoenix in the ice box from last night,” he suggested.
Phoenixes were a
fiery-colored, long-plumed fowl commonly raised in the region, but lacked any
of the powers of resurrection borne by their mythological namesake.
Michael’s father
wrinkled his nose at the prospect of cold bird and glumly muttered, “I’ll stick
with the soup.”
Michael tried
not to make a face and instead asked how his trip was. “Interesting,” Simon began as he took a
seat at the far side of the table away
from
his wife. “This
was an exciting one.”
Michael’s father
worked as an assessor for the government’s environmental insurance agency.
Arimbol, the island chain on which they lived, was full of unexplained natural
phenomena colloquially called folds. They were places where nature and physics
would bend. Most folds were so subtle that unless you were paying close
attention you could pass through them without notice, but others were
beautiful, miraculous places.
Michael had
heard of some where water flowed uphill, optics went awry, or wind burst from
the ground with the force of a hurricane. There were also folds that were quite
dangerous, that could make you sick, crazy, or even kill you. Most folds were
relatively small though, only affecting an area the size of his living room,
while the largest engulfed the entire Arimbolean archipelago.
Michael had
never had the chance to travel, so loved to hear stories whenever his dad
returned from one of his many trips. He had seen more of Arimbol than anyone
else in their village, so knew a great deal about its flora and fauna, most of
which existed nowhere else on Earth. Some were widespread across the islands
and were even farmed. Besides the phoenix and summer ghost carrots, their town
of New Canaan was particularly famous for the blue wine squeezed from coastal
cobalt grapes grown on the surrounding hillsides. East of Canaan, towards
Alexandria, was miles of black wheat.
While the hills
around Canaan were called the Blue Mountains, that area was sometimes referred
to as the Burnt Plains.
Some plants and
animals were less widespread. They were so specifically adapted that they might
inhabit a single pool of water. His father had told him about the white thorn
fish that clung to the slippery rocks of a single stream north of Urgench, or
the roaks, the giant birds that nested on the tallest peaks of the Morningstar
Buttes. Michael’s father told him that they were so large that they could
easily carry off hesats— the shaggy,
one-horned buffalos that grazed on the southern
grasslands.
Michael was
anxious for his father’s story. He sat down with him, keeping an eye on his
mother to make sure she was still eating. “So what did you see?” he urged.
“Well, a few
days ago, a farmer in Skarra claimed that a long chasm had opened in the ground and green fire just shot
out of it, destroying a huge swath of his crops. But when I arrived, the fields
were burned, but there was no sign of a fold. For all I knew the farmer had lit
the fields on fire himself while burning leaves. But upon closer inspection,
there was a series of cracks running down the center of his land. It looked
like the ground had unzipped like a pair of trousers.” He gave a sharp snort
then slurped back a spoonful of the thick stew. “Hmm, needs salt,” he said,
reaching for the shaker across the table before going on. “I told the farmer,
‘Look, I can fill a report out, but there’s nothing indicating that a fold did
this. For all I know, you just got drunk and did something foolish.’”
“The guy looked
offended and exclaimed, ‘It’s happened more than once! Just stick around
tonight and you’ll see!’” Michael’s father sighed. “I didn’t particularly want
to stay there any longer than I had to, but he seemed sure of his tale. Plus,
in my job, I’ve seen stranger things than fire shooting out of the ground, so I
agreed to spend the evening there. He and his wife were hospitable and offered
me dinner, but I couldn’t take it, of course. Regulations, you know. I
fortunately had the sandwich you packed for
me.”
Michael nodded,
glad his cooking had been of some use.
“I waited there
until midnight, but nothing happened, so I got up to leave. The farmer begged
me to stay just a little bit longer, but I was tired from the trip and wanted
to go back to the inn. Just as we stepped out onto his front porch, I
noticed a green glow coming from the field. We stood there watching as the
ground began to hiss and jets of green fire streamed from the earth. It
followed the jagged slit I had seen earlier, but it cracked wider. The crops
around it caught fire, and the line jutted quickly across the field. It ran
straight for their house.”
“What did you
do?” Michael asked, leaning in.
“We were
dumbfounded at first. I mean, we just sat there with our jaws hanging open like
a thirsty hesat. It was probably only a couple of seconds, but the fire moved
quickly. I got my wits about me and yelled at the farmer and his wife to get
inside and go out the back.”
Folds rarely
appeared in places people had inhabited for a long time. Usually his father was
called in to examine some place that people had wandered into while traveling.
It was his job to categorize and map them, and to file claims for people if
they were injured or lost property, but this was unusual that he had to rescue
people himself.
“I ran out into
the field and the damn farmer followed me. There was an irrigation ditch
running nearby. I quickly Moved the ground with blasts of energy until I carved
a trench running to the fissure. The water flowed through it and made the
flames die down a little, but the ground
was still cracking and burning and running for the house. So, the farmer and I
built up a huge mound of dirt to bury the rift.”
“For a moment,
it seemed like we stopped it, but then it just shot straight through the mound.
A few seconds later, the farmer’s entire house was gone— just burned to ashes.
The fold finally stopped just short of the tree line at the end of their property.”
“Was his family
okay?”
“No one got
hurt, but it’s a hell of a mess for the agency. We don't know if the land will be safe to live on, or even
their neighbor's land for that matter. I’m going to have to go back with a crew
and run a bunch of tests on it. For now, the farmer and his neighbors are
staying with friends, but we're going to have to find somewhere permanent for
them. It’s going to cost the crown a lot of money.”
“What a mess!”
Michael added.
“But we'll solve
it,” His dad said confidently as he got up to drop his bowl into the sink.
“I’ll probably have to go back there next week. Are you okay with watching your
mom again so soon?”
“Sure,” said
Michael, his willingness buoyed by his father’s heroism. “But I was wondering
if you could do me a favor tonight? My friends have been back from college for
the past few days and I haven't had a chance to see them, plus tonight are the
Discovery Day fireworks.”
Michael’s father
sighed and rubbed his temples. Michael could feel the refusal coming on.
“It’s been a
long couple of days, son. I could really use a night to relax…”
“But I haven’t
seen them in almost a year!” Michael implored. It had been a while since he had
used such an insistent tone with his father, but his friends were back for
summer from the Moving Academy in Alexandria and he was dying to catch up with
them.
His dad
grimaced, “Alright, just come back in time to help me get your mom upstairs.”
Michael was
elated. He thanked his father and set about finishing his chores so he could
hurry to see them.
