Speed of Light

W
hat if a young woman was both a girl to the living and a portal to the dying? I know the answer because I am. Look at me. If you see a girl on the edge of womanhood with shoulder-length curly brown hair and features tilting more classic than trendy, then congratulations—you are
alive
. If you see light, as if I am standing in front of the sun, then say your goodbyes—your time is coming. If all you see is light, you’re moving on, dead, and probably not coming back.

We are Fenestra, human beings made angel Light by those of the many names and faces. Just as recessive genes emerge unexpectedly, bringing forth red hair and
green eyes to a brown-haired, brown-eyed couple, the angel genes that constitute a Fenestra stay hidden until the right baby, the right family, and the right generation. We appear human to the living; to the dying we are Light. We are windows to the afterlife, shepherds of all life’s energy.

Before there were presidents and kings, before there were religions and sciences, before history books were written and the dinosaurs roared, there was Light and her companion, Dark. Day and night. Positive and negative. Beginning and end. Neither existed without the other.

We call this source-light the Creators. You may call it God, Allah, Buddha, Fate, science, Yahweh, or the Way. It answers to many names and has many forms and followers.

I answer to Meridian Sozu. My first name belonged to my great-aunt Meridian Laine Fulbright. Auntie taught me all she could in the few sunrises between my sixteenth birthday and her death. And my last name, Sozu, belonged to my father, who is out there somewhere, hiding with my mother and little brother. Hiding from me and from the Aternocti who hunt me. The Aternocti are the Dark who extinguish the Light. My light. Your light. Any and all energy can be hijacked by them. They kill innocents easily, without remorse.

My destiny was set in stone at my birth, on December twenty-first, at midnight, on the winter solstice when I entered this world, carrying forth my family’s lineage. I was not just a girl born into a family who carried Fenestra genes, but I was also a girl who could change the course
of death, a girl who could shelter a soul and pass it back to the Creators, back to the Light.

I found Juliet Ambrose, a sister of the Light, with the help of my soul mate, Tens Valdez. Aided by a fledgling coalition of humans who chose to follow good and thwart evil, we pushed back against the Nocti with a small victory. Juliet’s destiny began on March twenty-first, the spring equinox. We survived Juliet’s transition from a Fenestra girl to full Window on her sixteenth birthday. Much like Auntie did with me, I taught her what little I knew in the hopes she wouldn’t be pulled across. She made it through. Barely. But her already wounded heart continues to bleed for the family she doesn’t know and for the children of Dunklebarger who she was unable to protect from the Nocti. I lose more sleep over her future than I do over my own. I have Tens. She seems lost and unwilling to trust. Angry beyond reason.

Hard to imagine that only five months before this, the Nocti wanted me dead and Juliet’s light turned into darkness. Preying upon greedy, entitled humans, the Nocti built a machine of oiled precision that tested children for Fenestra genes and forced their obedience. The torture and sacrifice of children without families was hidden from the world by a “charitable” institution by the name of Dunklebarger Rehabilitation Center. Here the children were housed until the Nocti were able to ascertain whether they were only human or part angel as well. We are still trying to find all the generations of children who were killed or who disappeared, in the hopes of finding
more of us alive. Auntie told me Fenestras who aren’t transitioned by other Fenestras are lost to the world. We need to find them all, any souls the Nocti didn’t drag down into the void. Each person who lives needs love. In a world where love is harder and harder to find, this new mission layers upon our duties to the dead.

Throughout, the one thing the Nocti didn’t count on, that they couldn’t begin to understand, was the bond formed between good people. The radiation of heart-lights united in common purpose reflects greater in the darkness than anything man-made ever can. Together we’d proven formidable. We’d broken the Nocti reign at Dunklebarger, DG, and a Creator’s tornado did the rest of the demolition. We’d held off Ms. Asura and wounded her.
But we all know she’s still out there
.

Tens is my Protector and was described by Auntie as a rare gift, a soul mate who has always known my feelings, even when miles separated us. I don’t have to lie to him about being a Fenestra. At some point we’re supposed to be able to communicate without words, but so far that hasn’t happened. Human in all other regards, he’s got my back; we’re each other’s sidekicks, not halves of one soul but amplifiers of each other.

We’re joined by creatures of the Creators. A wolf-dog named Custos, her name meaning “guardian,” is Tens’s best friend. She’s been with him since he trekked from Seattle to Revelation to find Auntie. Custos comes and goes as she pleases, doesn’t eat much, and seems to give her opinion in tail wags and tongue licks. It’s clear I’m lower on the
ladder than she is, at least in her mind. On the journey as well is a long-haired, short-tempered Maine coon named Minerva, or Mini. Minerva is named for the goddess of knowledge, and her expression says it all.

Mini arrived at Dunklebarger months before we did. She kept Juliet going, easing the ache of souls using Juliet’s window without her knowledge. Mini saved Juliet’s sanity, and maybe her life, more times than I care to count. She is the Fenestras’ creature and favors Juliet over me. I’m waiting. She’ll like me. Eventually.

But since our battle at Wildcat Creek, the Nocti are quiet and invisible.
Evil never gives up
.

Auntie gave me a journal in which each generation of my family’s Fenestra had written their experiences and pieces of our puzzle down for the next. Its cover is made of thick, cracking leather, embossed with all things alive. The penmanship is tiny and cramped. But I read it. Tens read it. We decipher more daily. Looking for ways to fully defeat the Nocti. To free Juliet’s mother, Roshana, who seems trapped at the window. To help ourselves.