Queens of All the Earth (3 page)

Olivia could not think of a defense for the Australian reviewers, so instead, she took off her shoes and asked, “Top or bottom?”

“Oh, it’s up to you,” Miranda said, disgorging her purse onto the bottom bunk. “You know I’m afraid of heights.”

Olivia creaked up to the top bunk and the bed squealed.

“Would you just listen to that?” Miranda continued, finding her pace and sticking to it. “I can’t even see any support for it under here. The top
one’s just resting on a bracket. I bet it would fall down any minute and crush someone in their sleep.”

“Do you want me to take the bottom bunk?” Olivia asked.

“No, just don’t wiggle too much. Anyway, don’t get comfortable. I’m going to find that blond girl and get this all sorted out. Hopefully we can change today before we unpack.” Miranda sneezed. “I think I’m allergic to something in here. Probably the wool blankets. And the dust.”

With her hands under her head, Olivia quietly (and gently) stretched out under her wool blanket. The ceiling, she noted, was stained rich gold where sunlight spilled in through the window by her bed and faded to cool blue in the darker depths of the room.

“I’ll be right back,” Miranda said. “And don’t fall asleep! If you sleep in the middle of the day, you’ll never kill the jet lag.”

Olivia listened to Miranda march down the corridor and heard the opening volley of a heated encounter between people who knew only maybe five words in common, though she was moderately confused because one of the voices was male. Olivia felt an accustomed discomfort at the discharge of her sister’s outrage, but it couldn’t pique her for long in her exhaustion. With passive defiance, she let sleep steal over her. Miranda could command her to stay awake but would never wake her once she was peacefully dozing.

It was then she became aware of how precarious her bed was, because it was floating, floating.

She dreamed of home, where trees with rain-darkened bark, bare and lace-like, scratched at the sky, and the scents of cider and wood smoke slithered around and into her with warm familiarity. She dreamed of her mother hugging her goodbye, and the scratch of her mother’s knitted sweater against her cheek, and the wool blankets they kept in the closet for sitting on when the grass was damp. She did not see the ceiling close to her nose, but the wallpaper in her own bedroom, and the table upon
which her lamp sat, and her red-glowing alarm clock.

But even in her dream, her old bedside lamp became the rail of the hostel bunk bed; her alarm clock, the glow of the sun through faded orange curtains. Her blanket didn’t smell like home, but like strangers. The familiar things spun from her one by one, as her sleeping mind struggled with the notion that they weren’t just around the corner. She was jerked awake by the sudden fear that she was falling back into the darkness where she had been before. The doctor had said it was possible.

She was surrounded by a crowd of terrors. She couldn’t remember where she was, or what time it was, or
who
she was, only that she was floating somewhere in the midst of alien sensations. Her limbs had acquired the stiffness of travel and deep sleep, and briefly she imagined herself paralyzed, though eventually she understood it was only heavy lethargy between spans of unconsciousness. She could, however, exert herself enough to look, through clouded eyes and with shallow breath, at the commotion around her.

A girl was bending over the bed a few rows down, the one distinguished by its hidden boxer shorts, and from a nearby corner a man hummed to himself. The silhouettes of two more male figures haunted the farthest end of the room. The murmuring double pillars of their bodies were solid. With a wave of new energy, she sat up toward them, but as she did so, a door between them closed and their voices and forms were trapped on the other side.

The other voices remained, and gradually, Olivia, tilting her head from one side to the other and squinting, worked out that the other two men had been in the other room on the opposite side of the alcove. She watched with unnatural stillness as a pair of girls and the humming man bustled out of the dormitory; she saw lights in the corridor appear and disappear and heard water and toilets running and music somewhere and unintelligible conversation.

By the time complete awareness of her own body returned, with tingling sensations down her toes and the stab of an angry muscle in her shoulder, the room had expelled the rest of its living contents, leaving only Olivia and the sound of Miranda’s soft snoring. A green glowing clock beside another traveler’s bed told her it was seven in the evening—dinnertime. Of course, Olivia reflected, Miranda could contradict her own edict, but Olivia was too exhausted to resent her for long, and resentment wasn’t a natural reaction for her anyway.

The door was shut at last by a considerate hand on the outside, and the sisters were again in darkness, except for the dim glow of streetlights from the window by their bunk. Olivia rolled toward the window, pushed the curtain aside, and looked out. Below was a stamp-sized garden framed by successive rooftop balconies and terraces that contributed green tendrils to its miniature wilderness. From the railings of the building opposite, a few sheets and towels fluttered against pale patches of interior light.

It was rustic and charming enough that Olivia could imagine the place as a scene in a book, safe and comfortable and fictional. The day’s sensations had overwhelmed her with a cacophonous mess of the alien and the familiar: rows of trendy fashion shops swelling the lower levels of intricate Iberian homes; a KFC leering over the corner down the block, across from a tapas bar with its front walls folded away and open to the street like a Parisian café.

Olivia had never been so homesick in her entire life. The prospect of a week surrounded by strangers filled her with dull dread.

Safe in her position above stray eyes, Olivia had a thorough, quiet cry over the dejection of a long day of stressful travel. The shaking and possibly the effort of cleansing herself of that sticky unhappiness finished for her the work of waking.

A gnawing hunger pulled on her nerves, and she tentatively stole down the ladder. Miranda, in her sleeping mask and earplugs, would never know.

In the twilight and the chill, slightly autumnal air, the dormitory felt suspended, a bubble in antique glass, somewhere between home and Barcelona. Olivia touched the bunks as she passed, the sting of cool metal grounding her. She swam through the evening atmosphere to the door and, with a creak, peered out. Here were the sounds of life again, warm brightness, and the scent of food. Gathering courage, she slipped out at last and pattered toward them.

In the common room, a Spanish pop station played cheery dance beats under the susurrus of a dozen people attempting to converse in at least four languages—Romantic, Germanic, and some that were neither, or so heavily accented they sounded only like a jumble of meaningless sounds. Among one group, the prevalent color seemed to be a bold shade of blue, displayed on shirts and scarves and even in the pattern of a kilt. Elsewhere, a cluster of twenty-somethings in stylishly decomposed layers of tank-tops and uselessly thin sweaters lobbed vague recommendations at each other.

A man in his thirties spoke more quietly to two familiar shapes, who had first appeared to Olivia as dark pillars but now revealed themselves as the reader from the corner and an older man, visibly related. Dancing around the edges and into the middle of it all, and then out again, was one young woman who seemed to be trying to speak to everyone at once.

The smell that had pulled her toward this confusion, she identified as a combination of omelets, spaghetti, and stir-fried green vegetables. As a meal, the collection was about as organized and sensible as the words coming from the mouths of the combined crowd.

The light fell on Olivia and soon she was seen.

A young man in a black staff shirt greeted her, in Spanish, with an infectious smirk. She didn’t understand much of what he said, except she thought she caught Miranda’s name. Something about his broad smile assured Olivia of its permanence, but at the same time made her feel
special, as if its warmth was extended to her most of all. However, he quickly turned with equal nonchalance and directed his attention to brighter objects.

Looking past the staffer, Olivia inadvertently met the tall reader’s eyes again, and recognition ignited his. Olivia, with a burning feeling, realized she was once again standing directly below the sunburst.

The boy stepped toward her. He smiled in a quiet, sad way, with his mouth closed.

“Do you want anything?” he asked, shrugging toward the tables scattered with food.

“I—um,” she began and stopped, surprised at how hoarse her voice was. The boy’s relative looked over and joined them before she could find another word.

“Why, hello there,” the older one said cheerily. He was barely her height, a soft, gray-haired man with a round face and young eyes. “You must be Miranda’s sister,” he said. She found her hand being grasped warmly by both of his, and then released. “Now, now,” he said, taking something out of his pocket and shaking it out. It was a handkerchief. “Such a pretty face,” he said in a soft Southern burr, patting her cheeks with the worn cloth. “Now why’s it all wet?”

She wished she knew. Olivia sniffed. She hadn’t noticed that her eyes were still welling. She wished she could sink into the floor. The older man just smiled gently.

“Let Greg get you something,” he said. “You just sit yourself down.”

Olivia couldn’t. She was already embarrassed by her tears and certain she was be the least interesting, least traveled person in the room. And apparently, they all knew about Miranda’s tirade.

Olivia shook her head and, without any further response, turned and slipped out of the room. She returned, shivering, to the calm, smothering darkness of the dorm room and, mesmerized by the sound of Miranda’s
whispery snoring, waited with unnatural stillness for the other sleepers to return.

O
livia refused to leave the dorm room by herself the next morning. That way she wouldn’t have to worry about overhearing people talk about her sister. So she and Miranda washed their faces together, rubbing the sleep-crumbs from their eyes over the same mirror. The sisters entered the chilly common room swathed in sweatshirts, with their morning hair hand-combed clumsily, their faces a matching set: big spoon and little spoon.

The young guy with the black staff shirt and the welcoming smile wandered in and out of the common room with a pail and a mop, but the two objects never seemed to meet each other or any horizontal surface. The waspish blond girl in braids who had welcomed them when they first arrived was engrossed by one of the computers at the back of the room—was she avoiding Miranda? Two unshaven, ashen-faced men leaned lazily against the lotus columns near her, smoking their morning cigarettes. The other three travelers in the room ate a traditional breakfast at the tables against the wall.

Olivia recognized once again the reader from yesterday and his older
relative at the far table, so it was a relief that Miranda steered her toward the emptier table, where a lone woman—the talkative one from last night—buttered her toast. She looked mid-twenties, about Miranda’s age, her short straight hair gathered in a spiky ponytail at the back of her head. She had the defiant ease of a person who wasn’t waiting for anyone. They sat across from her.

“I didn’t know breakfast was included,” Miranda whispered to Olivia, ineffectively attempting to maintain the privacy of their conversation. “I guess it makes up for things a little.”

“What’s wrong?” the other woman at the table asked in a jarring American accent. “If you need another pillow, ask Hugo. He brought me four last night when I asked for one, and I think one of them was his.” She smirked.

“I specifically booked a private room for two,” Miranda said, “and they stuck us in the mixed dorm. And when I talked to Hugo about it yesterday, he pretended he didn’t speak English, which I know can’t be true.”

Olivia wondered briefly if Miranda realized that, were she correct, Hugo, nearby with his mop, would overhear her quite clearly. Someone else did.

“I have a private room,” the older man at the next table called over with no embarrassment. “My son Greg and I are sharing it.”

Miranda smiled tightly.

“That’s nice.”

Their tablemate leaned forward and, her back to the two men, whispered (far more effectively than Miranda), “Those are the Browns. Beware. I try to ignore them, but they can’t catch a hint. Either of them. It’s like it’s genetic.”

“Why?”

“The dad’s a Baptist minister or something. Kinda creepy, kinda
off,
socially. From the South, sorta crazy, you know, like the spirit catches
them and they fall down, or whatever.” She leaned back. “Hey, I don’t think I caught your names. I’m Lenny Hawkins.”

Lenny ventured a hand, which was grasped with restrained enthusiasm.

“Real name’s Eleanor, but I hate it,” Lenny said. “It’s such an old-person name.” She laughed.

Miranda’s response was a prolonged blink, but Olivia could tell her sister was thawing.

“We’re from the South too, actually. Virginia,” Miranda said after their names. “Our mom moved down from New England, but our dad is—was—from a real old Southern family. The library is named after them—the Somerset Public Library.”

“I can’t imagine being settled in a place that long. Grew up a military brat, and I’ve had itchy feet since I was a kid,” Lenny said. “I’ve lived in Berlin, Dublin, Edinburgh, Johannesburg. Spent some time in New Delhi. My favorite so far is Hong Kong, though. I’m telling you, the future is Asia. Go east, young woman. There’s a great breakfast bar there run by an Aussie. Best eggs I’ve had in my life, and the menu is in Cantonese.”

“Didn’t you worry about the bird flu?”

“This guy kept his own chickens, on the roof. I’m surprised they didn’t get altitude sickness. He was a real crazy.”

While Miranda interrogated Lenny about Barcelona, Olivia watched as Mr. Brown caught Hugo on his second pass from back bathroom to hall. They spoke—Olivia couldn’t tell in what language—and Mr. Brown beckoned his son, who followed the pair down and away into the hall that led to the far side of the hostel, to the dark unmapped region of the manager’s rooms.