Mariposa (2 page)
Fleeing the house, Aimee found herself wandering down to the little stream winding at the bottom of the yard, to the pool by the big rock under the willow tree, where she had spent countless hours of spare time as a child. Wasted time, she was thinking—
“Aimee! Welcome back!”
Standing on the flat stone amid willow fronds, Aimee gasped, and not just because a sunfish had stuck its head out of the water and spoken to her. Rapt, she gazed at the commonplace little fishes wafting like spirits through the sunlit and shadowy depths. As if forgetting a dream, she had forgotten all about this limpid pool bright with sunnies. For uncounted days of her childhood she had watched them, waded among them, fed them bread and Cheez Whiz and hot dog ends, tried to touch them like trying to touch angels.
And then…what had happened? Seemingly overnight, something had changed, not just her changing body but everything about her life, and she had left this font behind her.
Another iridescent head broke the sun-dappled surface. “Bet you forgot all about us.”
“Yes, I did!”
Bubbles frothed up from the shadow-shining depths like laughter.
“I forgot a lot,” Aimee murmured, remembering how she had tried to learn what kinds they were—pumpkinseed, long-ear, red-ear, bluegill, green—but their coloring and variety had bewildered her. Recognizing individuals, she had given them childish names: Blue Streak, who had cerulean markings; Robin, a ruddy-breasted bluegill; Lightning, a sleek green; Bunny, a long-ear; Sunrise, a particularly vivid pumpkinseed, colored like orange clouds over a pure yellow belly and fins. And many others, including a large perch-striped bluegill, remarkable because his belly was neither ruddy, nor sunny orange, nor even buttercup yellow, but a delicate peachy pink. No name had seemed sufficient to express his uniqueness. Finally she had called him Mariposa, which she had learned in sixth grade was Spanish for “butterfly.”
Gazing down now at the lucent pool, Aimee saw her own cosmetically corrected, reflected face gazing up from the surface—yet at the same time she saw the dreams, the life, the intimations swimming in the depths behind her eyes. This place was her mirror and her mystery. She caught a glimpse of the face of a dead child in the water.
Or might the child yet live? “Hi, Sunrise,” Aimee whispered to a pumpkinseed flitting through water in the vicinity of her heart. It could not be Sunrise really, not after all this time, but maybe…maybe another Sunrise. “Hi, Robin Redbreast.”
“Hi, yourself!” They stuck their heads out at her, smiling toothlessly like babies.
“Hi, Greenie. Hi, Blue Streak. Hi—where’s Mariposa?”
A chorus fountained up:
“You should know!”
“Mariposa is our hero!”
“We tell the story of Mariposa to our small fry.”
“He ate the great fly—”
“Mariposa flew!”
“Someday Mariposa shall return.”
“He flew to the Otherworld.”
Aimee felt an almost audible echo in her mind: flew, flew,
d
é
jà vu
. She felt her jaw sag in a way she knew to be uncouth. For a moment her breath stopped. She stood with her mouth open, remembering as if cozening back a dream.
There had been an autumn day with sun-colored leaves floating on the water, sunfish drifting sluggish below, and a chill in the air like fate. And a knowledge in thirteen-year-old Aimee that she could not much longer fight her terrible need to conform, to abandon her childhood in favor of being just like the others. A new school year had begun. Soon she would give her whole being to belonging.
But before that could happen, she had given her soul to solitude and this pool.
She had done it herself. Lying on this rock, she had daydreamed her glimmerwisp soul out of herself and watched it dangle on its silver thread finer than spiderline. She had watched it alight like a mayfly on the pool’s silver surface amid the golden leaves. She had watched the shining fish gather. And she had seen the largest one take it.
Mariposa.
Mariposa had gulped the gleaming bait and snapped the line. But then in an arc like a rainbow he had leapt clear out of the water. He had leapt so greatly that he had landed on the rock at young Aimee’s feet. Blue gills, green fins, iridescent cerulean face and sky pink soft underbelly, all the butterfly colors of him had lain there without even flopping. And his indigo eyes had gazed up at her with wisdom in them as deep as wells.
And then…
Remembering, Aimee gasped for breath as if she were drowning, then whirled and ran, bursting out of willow fronds as if rending a veil. She darted back to the house.
“Mom!” she yelled up the steep stairs. “Mother! Do you still have my fish?”
“What?” Mom’s voice floated down from the attic.
“My fish!” Aimee bellowed not at all like a polished professional woman. “My sunny!”
Steps creaked down from the attic. Mom ambled to the head of the stairs and peered down at her. “Your what?”
Just like the child she used to be, Aimee wailed, “My bluegill! The only one I ever caught. Do you still have it?”
“Heavens, honey, I don’t…”
“I told you to keep it!” Aimee screamed.
“Check the freezer. No, wait. Check the other freezer. In the garage. In the top of the old Maytag.”
The white matriarch of appliances, plump and rounded yet imposing in her bulk, still hummed in a corner as if waiting for choir rehearsal to start. Aimee felt her hands shaking as she opened the heavy door to reveal a shadowy, empty womb. Her heart dropped like a stone before she saw the other, smaller door to an inner sanctum. She snatched it open, trembling.
At first she saw nothing in that tiny, heavily frosted hollow. She thrust both hands in, clawing, searching, and felt something amid all the whiteness.
From the very back she pulled a packet so hoarily crusted that she could not at first tell for sure whether it was her own. Shaking, she hugged it between her hands until her living heat had melted the years away. Then she looked at thickly wrapped white freezer paper heavily taped and labeled in a childish scrawl.
“Yes. Yes!” Aimee wanted to yell for joy, yet she started to cry.
*
“Oh, how beautiful!” the Warloctor exclaimed, gazing into the lunch cooler Aimee had placed on her desk. Today she wore a turban of dusky pink silk like the cabbage roses growing down from the ceiling, almost the color Mariposa’s belly had once been.
Aimee murmured, “He was still alive when I put him in the freezer. His gills were still gasping. I hope it didn’t hurt him much.”
“He’s long dead now,” said the Warloctor.
“Can you get my soul out of him?”
“Already did.”
“What!” Aimee jumped up from her chair. “Is it—is it going to be all right?”
“It’s more than just all right. As I said, it’s quite beautiful, one of the loveliest I’ve ever seen. Come see.”
Standing beside the craggy, dark woman, Aimee gawked. “It’s
glowing
, she whispered. “Like a firefly.”
“Uh-huh. I believe your mother was right, Aimee. You
are
a bit precocious.”
Gazing at her own fragile, gauzy immortality, Aimee felt herself begin to cry again, quiet tears like warm rain wetting her face. Probably her makeup was running, but she didn’t care.
The W.D. asked, “Are you ready to have it back?”
“Yes.”
The Warloctor unlocked a desk drawer, drew it open and pulled out a white silk bag. From it she fished a length of silver filament as fine as spiderwebbing. She warned, “Even though the procedure is noninvasive, there may be some degree of psycho-emotional trauma afterward. Having a soul is not always easy.”
“I’ll risk it,” Aimee said.
“Good. Stand facing me, then. Spread your arms like wings. You’d better close your eyes.”
Aimee felt the return of her soul like a soundless explosion of inner light. All her dead certainties blew up and away as if in a sweet wind, and a fountain of lively contingencies flowed in to quicken her breathing and her heartbeat. She whispered, “Oh!” and her eyes snapped open. “Oh!” she cried aloud. “Oh, I love your turban. What the devil am I doing in this monkey suit?” Her pantyhose itched, her waistband cut her breathing, her high-heeled shoes pinched. She had always hated to be dressed up like a Barbie doll; what had she been thinking? “Oh!” The glitter of a sizable diamond caught Aimee’s eye.
She stood staring at her own ring finger, remembering as if cozening back a dream—
Colin. Her fiancee. Manhattan penthouse. Porsche. Lear jet to fly to the vacation homes in Malibu, the Virgin Islands, Nice.
Handsome, charming Colin with his rich boy toys, of which she was about to become one.
Colin, who probably kissed himself in the mirror every day before the maid brought his breakfast in. Colin, who had no more soul than a steel-belted radial tire.
“Lord in heaven! What was I thinking?” Aimee cried. She yanked the ring off her finger and threw it into the lunch cooler with the dead fish.
Edgar Award–winning author
Nancy Springer
,
well known for her science fiction, fantasy, and young adult novels,
has written a gripping psychological thriller—smart, chilling, and unrelenting…
DARK LIE
available in paperback and e-book in November 2012
from New American Library
Dorrie and Sam White are not the ordinary Midwestern couple they seem. For plain, hard-working Sam hides a deep passion for his wife. And Dorrie is secretly following the sixteen-year-old daughter, Juliet, she gave up for adoption long ago. Then one day at the mall, Dorrie watches horror-stricken as Juliet is forced into a van that drives away. Instinctively, Dorrie sends her own car speeding after it—an act of reckless courage that puts her on a collision course with a depraved killer…and draws Sam into a desperate search to save his wife. And as mother and daughter unite in a terrifying struggle to survive, Dorrie must confront her own dark, tormented past.
“A darkly riveting read...compelling.”
—Wendy Corsi Staub, national bestselling author
of Nightwatcher
and
Sleepwalker
“
A fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat thriller that will have you reading late into the night and cheering for the novel's unlikely but steadfast heroine.”
—Heather Gudenkauf,
New York Tim
es best-selling author of
The Weight of Silence
and
These Things Hidden
Learn more about all of Nancy’s titles at her website, www.nancyspringer.com.