Idols (37 page)
“Now mine,” says Lucas.
A grateful smile escapes my lips as I kiss Lucas on the hands and press a figurine into his palms. He turns it over and over in his hands, as if it’s the first time he’s ever really looked at it. Then he slides it up onto the shrine, next to the others.
We’re in this together
, he tells me.
That’s when I feel a tap on my shoulder. I look up to see Ro on one side of me, holding out his hand.
We’re in this together, too.
Fortis and Bibi are right behind him.
I look from the Emerald Buddha to where the other creatures have joined it on the shrine.
As we sit together—kneeling amid the wafting incense and the flickering candles, surrounded by the heavy scent of jasmine and lotus and rose—I feel a sense of family I haven’t felt since the Mission. A kind of peace that I perhaps have never felt before.
And for perhaps the first time in my life—I’m not sure—I think I begin to pray.
Padre, my Padre.
Help me.
You said I could do great things. I believe I can, now. I believe you were right.
I am different. I know that now.
Most people do not fight off alien races from their home world.
Most people are not made to do courageous things. Amazing things. Things no one in their right mind would want to do, even me.
But I know I must.
Miracles, you would have said. These are miracles you are expecting. They are expecting.
Have faith, you said.
Why must I?
In what? Why?
Believe, you said.
Why must I?
In what? Who?
I want to be you, Padre. Desperately. I want to believe like you. I don’t want this haunting.
I want to fall asleep at night next to… well, anyone, not wondering if I will wake up again.
I want to know things beyond doubt. To believe truths are true. And life is long. And people are good.
And love is life, immortal and unending—and always, always right.
So help me. Help me do what I need to do so I can be who I need to be.
What I am.
A sister.
A big sister.
Then my mind clears and I can think of nothing other than the moment I am in, because all around me, the monks are chanting, the incense is burning, and the candlelight from the shrine begins to reflect off the jade figurines.
One by one, the little jade creatures begin to vibrate, rattling against the gold floor of the shrine beneath them.
One by one, my friends’ faces catch the light. First Tima, then Lucas—then even Fortis and Bibi.
Finally, even I am awash in light.
Villagers begin to murmur and pray, backing away.
I catch my breath as the candlelight grows, reflecting one from another—among the jades, among us—until a luminous web of lines connects the creatures and the humans and the temple around us, with an almost laserlike precision.
I feel as if I am watching the sun rise.
And then it does.
She does.
A beautiful child, a girl—with skin the color of wet sand, and hair the color of snow—steps out from behind the enormous green glass Buddha.
It’s her.
It’s the little jade girl.
I hear Tima gasp, and I feel Lucas stiffen next to me. Ro scrambles to his feet. Bibi and Fortis shift on the floor, behind me.
Here she is. They can’t believe it, either. The Buddha has given her up.
“Big sister,” the girl says. “You came. I’ve been waiting.”
“I know, little sister,” I say, simply, because it’s true. “I’ve been trying to find you, all this time. It wasn’t easy.” I pause, almost afraid to ask the next question. “Who are you?”
She smiles, touching her chest. “Sparrow. I’m Sparrow.”
“Sparrow?”
“My name.” She struggles to find the words, furrowing her brow beneath her white hair. “It is more. It is—what I am.”
“I’m Doloria. Dol.”
I kneel in front of her. She is so delicate, standing here in the middle of the forest, in the middle of the ancient jades. She’s like a moth, I think. A butterfly.
A baby bird, I think. The one from my dreams.
It’s more than my name. It’s what I am.
“Show me,” I say. “Show me what you are.”
Sparrow looks at me, a long moment. Then she raises her hand to the sky.
I will, Dol.
Because I have been waiting for you. Because now that you are here, it is time.
I hear the words without her speaking them. They appear in my head, as if they are my own.
Waiting for what, Sparrow?
She lifts her hands again, this time both of them. This time high above her head, palms to the sky.
She closes her eyes.
Now
, she says.
Now.
Go home.
It is time.
As if on command, a thousand birds—tens of thousands of them—rise from the jungle growth, pitching and climbing and soaring up into the early orange of the dawn sky.
Birds.
Real, living birds.
They are more than hope.
They are unfathomable. They are uncontainable. Wings flapping, hearts beating, they are as alive as life itself.
I watch them through the wide-open doorways of the temple. My smile is so big that it becomes a laugh. Sparrow smiles back at me, but she never takes her eyes off the birds.
The villagers around us are chanting. They chant and they cry but they don’t stop. They don’t know what’s happening, or why, but they don’t want it to stop any more than we do.
And so we all watch, while the birds squawk and sing and call to each other, until the sky is as full of noise as it is of feathers. It is more than the Padre ever could have described to me.
I am seeing what my parents saw, I think.
I am seeing life, before The Day.
Life endures.
Life returns.
The Bishop was right. The Bishop, and the Padre. Hope really is the thing with feathers.
Forward and back. Forward and back. Switchbacks on an endless hill.
That is what this is, living.
I watch the birds and she watches the birds and together, we are one happily new thing.
Sisters
, I think.
I have a sister now, and she has me. That is hope enough.
GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH: EASTASIA SUBSTATION
MARKED URGENT
MARKED EYES ONLY
Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B
RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies
Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.
DOC ==> FORTIS
Transcript - ComLog 01.03.2070
DOC::NULL
//comlog begin;
sendline:
I want to know more about your complications. What you did not expect to find and how that changes your priorities.;
return:
Difficult to decide whether to simply ignore the new variables or to incorporate them and refine my primary function.;
return:
I was not expecting to discover a planet inhabited by creatures like humans.;
sendline:
Explain, if you would.;
return:
I am finding it difficult to do so. The level of technology. The historical data. Biological diversity.;
return:
Nothing like this was planned for.;
connection terminated;
//comlog end;
Fortis is staring.
“This is Sparrow,” I say to Fortis. “And Sparrow, this is Fortis.”
“Fortis,” she says, wide-eyed. “What a funny name. Is that what they call you?”
He nods, almost bashfully. I’m intrigued. Not a single rude word comes out of his mouth. I’ve never seen Fortis act like this.
As if he doesn’t know what to say, for once.
As if he’d pass out if he saw one more unexpected thing. Not very Merk-like, I think.
Maybe right now he’s not very much of a Merk.
“Can I go play with the birds?” Sparrow asks, looking up at me.
“Of course,” I say, watching her as she runs across the stone courtyard, chasing her namesake.
How strange, that she should ask me. As if I were responsible for her in some way. As if we really were sisters.
“Stop looking at her like she’s some kind of lab rat,” I say to Fortis, the moment Sparrow is out of earshot. “She’s a child.”
He doesn’t smile. “You don’t understand. The fifth is not a child, Dol. Not just a child. No more than the rest of you were.” Fortis sounds somber. “At least, she was never supposed to be.”
“What is she, then?” As I say it, I’m not sure I want to know. “What was she supposed to be?”
Fortis leans against the white plaster walls of the temple. “In simple terms? The soul of the world. Humanity, in its most basic genetic sense.”
Finally.
He’s never been this direct with me before. With any of us. He’s never admitted to knowing this much about us.
About what we are meant for.
What we can do.
Ro looks incredulous. “The soul of the world? Like one of Tima’s blood tattoos? Is that supposed to be some kind of a joke?”
I look at Fortis more closely, because I don’t think he’s kidding. “What are you saying, Fortis?”
“The fifth—Sparrow—has never been a joke. She was never a reality, either, not until now.”
Lucas speaks up. “What was she, then?”
“A fail-safe, beyond all else.”
Tima nods. “Beyond us, you mean.”
Fortis shrugs, although we all know it wasn’t a question. “Sparrow was supposed to be everything the Lords were not. Sorrow and love and rage and fear,” he says. “Like you, yes. But she was supposed to be more than that, as the sum of those things. Sparrow was meant to be the one chance we have as a race to hold on to everything we ever were. What makes us human.”
“And what is that, Fortis?” I ask him, but I’m not sure even Fortis knows.
Does anyone?
What makes us human?
I get it before Fortis says it. I think it’s the birds that remind me. The birds, and what the Bishop said about them.
“Hope. Sparrow. That’s what she is.” I look at him.
Fortis nods. “The little bird. Sparrow. Espera.
Icon speraris
, to be exact. The Icon of hope.”
“So you all knew? All along? About Sparrow?” Even though I’ve always been certain that Fortis knew more than he would say, the words are painful now that they have been allowed out into the room between us.
“Not all of us.” Fortis looks strangely uncomfortable.
Then I understand.
“Just you,” I say slowly.
Bibi speaks up, from the doorway. “We knew nothing, Dol. Not the rest of us. We never tried to make a fifth Icon. As far as we knew, our first four attempts had failed.”
“Four? You mean, us?” I look from Bibi to Fortis. “Not Sparrow?”
Fortis looks grim. “Wherever she comes from, I’m not sure she can even be explained, in scientific terms. It all happened after the Lords arrived. So who knows where she comes from, really?”
I turn away. The sun is rising, and the sky is full of birds, and where Sparrow comes from doesn’t seem to matter right now.
“Sun’s up, an’ we should be on our way.” But Fortis looks at the sky as he says it, and makes no move to go.
“True,” says Bibi. “The elephants will have eaten their way down to Chiang Ping Mai by now.” He rubs his own belly at the thought of breakfast, which nobody appears to be offering.