30
BIRDS
Birds used to sound like rubber squeak toys, the kind you’d give a dog. They sounded like the rapid flutter of wings or a folded paper fan. A bicycle tire that made the same noise in the same place as it turned, over and over. A monkey having a tantrum, some of them. An old mattress right when you sit on it. Sometimes, early in the morning, they sounded like all those things at once.
This is what the Padre told me.
I think about it, as I scrub the dirt from my arms and legs, in the dripping faucet in the barn. I grab another handful of straw, and smile as I remember the hot showers and pristine plumbing of the Embassy. My stomach roils, though, at the thought of the Ambassador, and I close my eyes, willing the memories away.
Lucas has been gone for a full day now, nearly twenty-four hours. He’s gone to see about his mother, if there’s anything or anyone left to see. When I’m honest with myself—really honest—I don’t know if he’s ever coming back.
I force myself to think about the birds again.
Birds.
I wonder if my father heard many birds. I spent an hour, this morning, rummaging through the Padre’s desk, learning what I could about my family, from the old photographs the Padre kept for me. Old photographs and older papers. My father worked for the Forest Service of the Californias. Apparently he would sit for long hours in the middle of the Grasslands, holding binoculars to his eyes, hoping to keep the trees and the animals safe from forest fires. My mother sketched him that way, sitting in a tree.
My own father was waiting for disaster but looking in the wrong place. He wasn’t looking at the skies. He was looking at the trees.
I turn off the dripping faucet.
I wonder, as I pull on my clothes and wring the water out of my hair, what pulled my father to the wilds?
Perhaps it was the same thing that drew him to my mother. I imagine many sunsets and sunrises between them, between all of us, in the life I lost, unlived.
She would have taught me how to draw. He would have taught me how to use the binoculars. I would have listened to the sounds of many thousands of birds.
I wonder what it is I’ll miss, when all this is gone. Like the birds. If things don’t work out for us, or the city, or the Rebellion.
Ro, and Lucas. When they aren’t attacking each other.
Tima’s hands.
Fortis and his magical jacket.
Doc and his jokes.
I think of everything we have lost, and everything the Lords have left us.
Somehow there is still so much more to lose.
I am listening for the birds in the silence, when I hear the sound of footsteps behind me. I feel the familiar warmth, spreading from the outside in, and then from my inside out.
I can’t believe it, but there’s no other feeling exactly like his. It has to be true.
I say it before I see him.
“Lucas?” I fling myself toward him, hurtling myself into him. “I was starting to think you were dead.” The words don’t carry enough weight. They can’t. They’re only words. They don’t hurt the way the not-knowing did.
He smiles. “I’m not. I’m here.”
The flush creeps from my heart to my cheeks. “What happened?” I look up at him, reaching my arms more tightly around his neck.
“I found my way to Santa Catalina, but I couldn’t cross. They say the Embassy is empty. I didn’t stay long, and it took me a while to get out. They’ve closed the Tracks for good now, Dol. The day after the blast.”
“And your mother?” I hold my breath.
“She’s gone. GAP Miyazawa recalled her to the Pentagon. I don’t know what’s going to happen now.” His words are grim, but not unexpected.
Casualties of war, Fortis would say. I know it means something different to Lucas, whatever she was or wasn’t to him.
“I’m sorry.”
I put my hand on his cheek. His mouth twists into a smile. The barest part of one.
“I like you,” he says. “How long am I going to have to keep acting like I don’t?”
“You’re not doing a very good job.” I smile back at him.
“I’m not?” He looks surprised, and I laugh.
I pull my head back to where we can lock our eyes together. “I like you too, Lucas.” I smile.
We kiss.
We really kiss.
Kissing Lucas is like kissing a kiss itself. There’s no way to explain it any better than that. And I don’t even want to try.
All I want to do is kiss him.
This is more than a kiss, I think. It is real and it is happening to me.
It has fallen on me, as sudden as ships out of the blue sky. Like monsters. Like angels.
I feel his hand as it loosens my binding, unwrapping the long, thin strip of muslin from my wrist.
I let him do it. I want him to do it. I take my other hand and fumble at it, helping him pull it free.
Then his hand covers my smaller one, and he stops me before my binding drops to the floor.
“Doloria.”
I look up at him and take him in, the dark blond hair that falls long into his face. The various cuts and bruises he earned in the blast. The worry in his eyes and the care in his smile. He’s as beautiful to me as the Observatory, as the Cathedral, as the Hole itself. And he’s here in my Mission barn, which means he’s not in Santa Catalina.
“Everyone thinks you’re dead, you know.”
I smile up at him, sadly.
“Maybe they’re right. Maybe I am. Maybe I’ve become someone else.” Like a butterfly and a cocoon. Like the water cycle. Like the Chumash, I think.
Lucas nods. There is always a part of him that seems to understand the words I cannot say.
Then my smile fades, because in the distance, out of the corner of my eye, I see Ro watching us. He’s alone in the meadow, and we’re alone in the barn.
Still, I see the emotion in his face, naked and unabashed.
He wants to kill Lucas.
And as much as my heart aches, I know some things will never change.
EMBASSY CITY TRIBUNAL VIRTUAL AUTOPSY: UPDATE
CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET
Assembled by Dr. O. Brad Huxley-Clarke, VPHD
Note: Conducted at the private request of Amb. Amare
Santa Catalina Examination Facility #9B
Deceased has been positively identified as Doloria Maria de la Cruz, an adolescent girl from the outlying Grasslands community of La Purísima.
Identity has been confirmed by Dr. Huxley-Clarke and verified by the Embassy Labs.
Further information has been sealed as Classified.
This case has been closed.
Remaining inquiries can be directed to Dr. Huxley-Clarke, VPHD.
Thank you.