“You have already fallen,” he said.
The Dahak faltered for an instant at this ghost whispering to a memory, and a ripple coursed through its wings of night. Then it took Daen in its teeth and crushed ribs against ribs until blood poured from his lungs onto the pavestones, like a bright flower unfurling.
Toward the end of my medical school pediatrics rotation, I woke in an on-call room from a nightmare about a very sick little girl melting into a cloud of light. I had gotten to know her parents well, particularly her father. It had been a tumultuous year for me, spent in hospitals up and down the San Francisco Peninsula, filled with languages ranging from Spanish to Samoan, and punctuated by strange sights alternately disgusting and beautiful. The people I met haunted me, especially the father of this girl. I will never forget his eyes as he watched his daughter.
I should have spent any free time I had studying or working on my Spellwright trilogy, but instead I found myself haunted by a new story that would try to capture something of what I had seen during the year. One rare day out of the hospital, the following story spilled out of me onto the page in very rough form. I showed it to a few people and realized that it would require more polishing than I had time for. So it sat on my hard drive while I finished medical school and pressed ahead on my novels. But when Shawn asked me if I had a story for an anthology to help him recover from all that cancer had put him through, I knew I had to revive the story and try to get it right.
— Blake Charlton
HEAVEN IN A WILD FLOWER
Blake Charlton
The baby girl floated around the water pump as a small, radiant cloud of light. She illuminated the nearby ferns and made the darkness beyond her darker.
Joaquin Lopez put his bucket down. He was a tall, thin man. Early forties. Dark eyes and hair. He pressed a shaking hand to his mouth, wondered if he had the balls to gather in the girl. He looked to the sky for a heaven but saw only stars between redwood branches.
He called to Luis and Collin. When the boys came out of the cabin, he told Luis to fetch a sheet and Collin to go to town for the doctor. Collin was old enough that he turned and ran, but Luis stood staring. “Papá,” he asked, “what is it?” Now that Collin was gone, they spoke in Spanish.
“Only a baby. You looked the same. Get the sheet.”
The boy went and Lopez stepped closer. The baby didn’t seem to notice. Tendrils of her indigo light curled around a water drop forming on the pump’s spigot. The drop fattened and fell, dispersing her into a corona. She made a crackling sound, like pine needles burning. Something in the sound reminded Lopez of childish laughter. “Nena,” he asked, “have you come to stay?”
The nimbus paused. Another drop grew from the spigot, and she coalesced around it. Lopez crept forward until he was standing next to her. The drop fell. Again the corona, again the soft crackling laughter.
Luis came back with the sheet. Lopez took it and wondered if he should wait for Robert. It’d be safer that way. This wouldn’t be so bad for Robert. A familiar, dark, and doubtful mood began closing in around Lopez.
“Papá?” Luis whispered.
Lopez stared distractedly into the nimbus. A trill of irritation had interrupted his doubts. He didn’t want to wait anymore, to do the careful thing anymore. Maybe this would be the last time he came across a baby girl.
“Papá,” Luis repeated, then switched to English. “Daddy, what’s wrong?”
Lopez started. “Nothing’s wrong,” he murmured, made up his mind. To hell with caution. He draped the sheet around the baby. She didn’t seem to mind, but when he pulled her upward, some of her tendrils gathered around a water drop. He waited for the drop to fall, and then gathered the rest of her into the sheet.
“Oh, oh, Nena, it’s okay, it’s okay,” he whispered in Spanish and carried her back to the cabin. Even wrapped in the blanket, she lit up the lowest redwood branches. Then Lopez noticed that his hands glowed. A shiver of fear ran down his body.
He had the balls after all.
“Papá,” Luis asked, “where did she come from?”
“From a heaven. All reincarnated babies come from a heaven, just like you did. She’s your sister now. Maybe she was your sister in your last life too.”
“But you didn’t come from a heaven, Papá?”
“I wasn’t reincarnated. I was born.”
They walked into the cabin. “Will she stay?” Luis wanted to know.
“Hopefully. Light one of the candles in the dresser.”
“What is the girl called?” Luis asked while trying to do what he was told.