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[Segment 2]
at home, on a day like this, and go out to find what there was to find in this small, new world.
The failing had been in the acute lack of company, the dire loneliness that came in the fact that she was so accustomed to a second heartbeat near her own. She’d pushed up rocks, and pulled grass to chew, and kicked around the dirt and leaves to no avail. The universe had taken on a stark, alarming hollowness to the one she had known.
“Oh, honey, don’t be like that. You’ll be going to school in a week, and you’ll make new friends. I know you will!” Mutely, Angel had nodded, knowing the words to be truth. She wondered, in her small heart, if there would be anyone quite like Peter Collins in this new neighborhood. Some part of her understood, even at eight years of age, that this was the angst of every child that is uprooted – that the feeling was so terrestrial that she almost didn’t want something so mundane, so common, to even be a part of her life. Angie had such an incredible softness for eccentricity that it was often confused, for her, with necessity.
Gingerly placing her colored pencils on top of a stack of smaller boxes, Angel pushed herself to a stand and rocked gently on to the balls of her feet. Eyes downcast, her gaze focused abruptly on something bright on the floor between her feet. The glass that Pete had given her a week odd before her embarkment glittered on the smooth wood panel, casting light and shadow around itself in a tight mosaic. She bent to pick it up and slip it in her pocket. It glowed against her fingers like a dagger of ice.
There was unlimited minutia in her life; sheaves of paper with rudimentary poetry and fiction, the poorly framed artwork of a young child’s fantasy. Her boxes and suitcases overflowed with the token trinkets and treasures of girlish youth, but this object coughed up by the earth of her familiarity, this thing that reflected broken images of her eyes and lips seemed pinnacle of it all. The most important thing. Worth more to her than a diamond its size would be. The glass itself was a strange color, unlike anything she’d seen made out of glass. Cobalt colored shards were everywhere, shining beautifully up from the stones in the brook or dusty on roadsides, and such small pieces of shattered beauty were of mild interest to her. She and Pete had once made a mosaic out of them, pressed each piece delicately into some mud that they’d smoothed with their hands. It dried in the sun and cracked, disintegrating over days as the wind stroked it quietly. The whole process of watching that design of their creation fade and mold into the earth, melting into nothing but an odd preponderance of dark blue glass half-buried in the sand, had been fascinating to her. But this thing… this thing was almost colorless, though undeniably not simple clear glass. It was lighter even than Peter’s eyes, almost like the color of her mother’s wedding dress, which she’d seen once years earlier while visiting another Aunt outside of her state.
Angel slid the shard into her pocket and padded downstairs into the smell of roast lamb and herbed rice that welled warm from the dining room, totally stark but for the small table they’d unpacked hours earlier. Her smiling aunt leaned over the table, beckoning her with familial comfort into the circle of light and safety. There was a shadow on Angie’s mind, though, that would not leave her.
Night fell silently on her bedroom hours later; she lay prone with her back flat against the mattress, palms pressed downward with resolute stillness. It was long minutes since her lights had been shut off. She was far from sleep, far from the comforting wander in dreams. It was not home that was on her mind, not the rolling field or the stream that had been for the two of them countless rivers and oceans of myth. The wall of forest which had been the walls of a city, caves of untold horror, a forest barricading them from the last land of light… these things were no longer in her. Angel had let go of them like one would let go sand in the wind, drifting away lazily into the sprigs of gold grass and verdant flora. Leaning hard on her mind was Pete Collins, quiet boy and confidant, reader of poetry he didn’t understand, keeper of long glances toward a sky his irises reflected perfectly. Angel rolled onto her stomach, thrusting a thin arm beneath her pillow and winding her fingers around the adamant piece of glass that stuck into her life, now, like a needle. Many years later, Angel Marx would come to understand that this was the last night of her real innocence.
“I’m going to see him again soon.” She intoned to her aunt the next morning, staring levelly at the overcast sky beyond the kitchen window. The statement was resolute, but more a revelation than an imperative, an entirely strange construction coming from a tiny girl barely yet eight years old.
“Why, whoever do you mean?” Mrs. Marx replied, initially inclined to think nothing of it, expecting Angie to launch into one of her elaborately colorful introductions to her latest invented character or imaginary friend.
“Peter Collins.” Her niece and charge replied after a moment, still staring almost too intently out the window. Mrs. Marx’s mouth opened to say something in return, something to gently remind the child not to get her hopes to high lest the disappointment be to hard when the Collins’ weren’t actually relocated to an area near them. On seeing Angie’s stormy eyes, the faintly down turned corners of her mouth, Mrs. Marx’s jaw slackened and she let the moment pass in perplexed silence. Later, she told her husband: “Why, I’ve never seen a kid’s eyes like that before, John. It was like she knew, like she really knew.”
For one week Angel dreamed of darkness. A shadow seethed around her tangibly, warm and damp, pungent with forgotten things. In the tenebrae, she reached and fumbled, feeling the walls of her chamber close around her but perpetually unable to find anything with her hands. There was a jungle-heat pressing against her skin, a totally blindness in the lightless space – claustrophobic but still infinitely spacious, spreading liquidly on all sides of her. She could not see, and she could feel no motion, but there was sense in her that this plane, this heady oblivion, was undulating in all directions; like a heavy flag writhing in a stiff gale. Angie knew she was alone in this false world, and the first night – the first of seven precisely – she was terrified. On waking, her sweat cold and sheets clinging, she trembled with her lips open against the airy half-light of her moonlit room. Trying hard to breathe, she thought to herself that she’d dreamed of death, that she’d never been more afraid in her years than she was of descending back into that dream. For hours, she fought with her weary eyes, agonizing over wakefulness until the narrowest hours of the morning when she dropped back into trembling unconsciousness.
Three days later she was unafraid, standing among the inexorable tempest with her eyes pressed shut and her arms at her sides. On the last night, she came to the understanding that the lashing around her was like tendrils or tentacles… prehensile and sensitive, that she could move them in thought and desire. They could feel what her eyes could not see, what her arms could not reach to brace.
The next day, she could barely hold herself to the earth. There was immense, inexplicable excitement coursing in the threads of her veins. Excusing herself early from the dinner table, Angie retired early to bed and clamped down her eyelids, willing herself hastily into sleep. She awoke exhausted and perplexed, harried as if she’d not slept at all. The light that crawled through her window was dim and dusky; it had rained all week and was drier this morning, though the sky was far from clear. Angel spent a few moments sorting the darkness in her room from the darkness of her dream, the unkind embrace that had not paid her visit as expected, but was interrupted by a gently knocking at her door.
“I’m awake.” She all but whispered, gathering her bedclothes to herself as she sat up in bed, legs folded shakily beneath her. Her aunt came in as she was rubbing her eyes, stubbornly trying to wake. Her hair was tangled, her chest achy… Angel felt almost as if she’d been running. For her part, Aunt Marx was seemingly unaware of her poor condition – and this was for the better. Her Aunt and Uncle had never had children of her own, and her aunt had become a truly doting mother since Angie’s adoption at two. She would have been distressed to know anything of Angel’s discomfort, especially when it so was sourceless and thusly without cure as it was this morning.
“We’ve good news for you, my cherub.” Beaming prettily, her aunt sat down on the edge of the bed, folding her hands in her apron. Something inside of Angel softened to see this woman, ever affectionate and thankful, quiet and cloud-soft, warm in every gesture. Her smile was delicate and pale, damask cheeks hiding almost flawlessly a history of faltering, frail health that had driven a bad wedge between herself and her first husband, a few years before Angie’s birth.
After a moment, Angel realized that her aunt was waiting for her to speak. Mustering a closed-mouth “Hmm?” behind half a sleepy smile. She had, in the face of her other thoughts this morning, frank disinterest in the progress of her schooling arrangements, the unpacking – new things and old things for the house – and the whole business of this foreign land. She couldn’t find it in her heart, however, to do anything but feign anticipation and keep here eyes on those of her aunt.
The older woman stopped, pursing her lips into a smile, and stood abruptly.
“Oh, I do want it to be a surprise. You’d best wash up and get dressed, dear, and come downstairs for breakfast.”
Gazing strangely after her departing aunt, Angel pushed herself off the edge of the bed and flitted toward the washroom. From below wafted the mythical aroma of cinnamon bread and coffee. Breakfast was no ritual in the Marx household, so it was strange that her aunt would have risen early to bake for anything but the most special of occasions. Her mind cycled through the dates; they were nowhere near any birthdays, anniversaries, or real holidays. Perhaps, she thought, this was her surprise… a happy comfort-meal to celebrate their new settlement.
Pete blinked wearily at the early sunlight, pushing his hair off of his forehead with a scrubbed hand. At first, when his mother had bustled into his sparse bedroom, he’d panicked, thinking that surely he’d overslept for church. By the time coherency of the fact that it was the day before Mass, she already had him buttoned into a clean jacket, was smoothing his rumpled hair. It was about this time
The failing had been in the acute lack of company, the dire loneliness that came in the fact that she was so accustomed to a second heartbeat near her own. She’d pushed up rocks, and pulled grass to chew, and kicked around the dirt and leaves to no avail. The universe had taken on a stark, alarming hollowness to the one she had known.
“Oh, honey, don’t be like that. You’ll be going to school in a week, and you’ll make new friends. I know you will!” Mutely, Angel had nodded, knowing the words to be truth. She wondered, in her small heart, if there would be anyone quite like Peter Collins in this new neighborhood. Some part of her understood, even at eight years of age, that this was the angst of every child that is uprooted – that the feeling was so terrestrial that she almost didn’t want something so mundane, so common, to even be a part of her life. Angie had such an incredible softness for eccentricity that it was often confused, for her, with necessity.
Gingerly placing her colored pencils on top of a stack of smaller boxes, Angel pushed herself to a stand and rocked gently on to the balls of her feet. Eyes downcast, her gaze focused abruptly on something bright on the floor between her feet. The glass that Pete had given her a week odd before her embarkment glittered on the smooth wood panel, casting light and shadow around itself in a tight mosaic. She bent to pick it up and slip it in her pocket. It glowed against her fingers like a dagger of ice.
There was unlimited minutia in her life; sheaves of paper with rudimentary poetry and fiction, the poorly framed artwork of a young child’s fantasy. Her boxes and suitcases overflowed with the token trinkets and treasures of girlish youth, but this object coughed up by the earth of her familiarity, this thing that reflected broken images of her eyes and lips seemed pinnacle of it all. The most important thing. Worth more to her than a diamond its size would be. The glass itself was a strange color, unlike anything she’d seen made out of glass. Cobalt colored shards were everywhere, shining beautifully up from the stones in the brook or dusty on roadsides, and such small pieces of shattered beauty were of mild interest to her. She and Pete had once made a mosaic out of them, pressed each piece delicately into some mud that they’d smoothed with their hands. It dried in the sun and cracked, disintegrating over days as the wind stroked it quietly. The whole process of watching that design of their creation fade and mold into the earth, melting into nothing but an odd preponderance of dark blue glass half-buried in the sand, had been fascinating to her. But this thing… this thing was almost colorless, though undeniably not simple clear glass. It was lighter even than Peter’s eyes, almost like the color of her mother’s wedding dress, which she’d seen once years earlier while visiting another Aunt outside of her state.
Angel slid the shard into her pocket and padded downstairs into the smell of roast lamb and herbed rice that welled warm from the dining room, totally stark but for the small table they’d unpacked hours earlier. Her smiling aunt leaned over the table, beckoning her with familial comfort into the circle of light and safety. There was a shadow on Angie’s mind, though, that would not leave her.
Night fell silently on her bedroom hours later; she lay prone with her back flat against the mattress, palms pressed downward with resolute stillness. It was long minutes since her lights had been shut off. She was far from sleep, far from the comforting wander in dreams. It was not home that was on her mind, not the rolling field or the stream that had been for the two of them countless rivers and oceans of myth. The wall of forest which had been the walls of a city, caves of untold horror, a forest barricading them from the last land of light… these things were no longer in her. Angel had let go of them like one would let go sand in the wind, drifting away lazily into the sprigs of gold grass and verdant flora. Leaning hard on her mind was Pete Collins, quiet boy and confidant, reader of poetry he didn’t understand, keeper of long glances toward a sky his irises reflected perfectly. Angel rolled onto her stomach, thrusting a thin arm beneath her pillow and winding her fingers around the adamant piece of glass that stuck into her life, now, like a needle. Many years later, Angel Marx would come to understand that this was the last night of her real innocence.
“I’m going to see him again soon.” She intoned to her aunt the next morning, staring levelly at the overcast sky beyond the kitchen window. The statement was resolute, but more a revelation than an imperative, an entirely strange construction coming from a tiny girl barely yet eight years old.
“Why, whoever do you mean?” Mrs. Marx replied, initially inclined to think nothing of it, expecting Angie to launch into one of her elaborately colorful introductions to her latest invented character or imaginary friend.
“Peter Collins.” Her niece and charge replied after a moment, still staring almost too intently out the window. Mrs. Marx’s mouth opened to say something in return, something to gently remind the child not to get her hopes to high lest the disappointment be to hard when the Collins’ weren’t actually relocated to an area near them. On seeing Angie’s stormy eyes, the faintly down turned corners of her mouth, Mrs. Marx’s jaw slackened and she let the moment pass in perplexed silence. Later, she told her husband: “Why, I’ve never seen a kid’s eyes like that before, John. It was like she knew, like she really knew.”
For one week Angel dreamed of darkness. A shadow seethed around her tangibly, warm and damp, pungent with forgotten things. In the tenebrae, she reached and fumbled, feeling the walls of her chamber close around her but perpetually unable to find anything with her hands. There was a jungle-heat pressing against her skin, a totally blindness in the lightless space – claustrophobic but still infinitely spacious, spreading liquidly on all sides of her. She could not see, and she could feel no motion, but there was sense in her that this plane, this heady oblivion, was undulating in all directions; like a heavy flag writhing in a stiff gale. Angie knew she was alone in this false world, and the first night – the first of seven precisely – she was terrified. On waking, her sweat cold and sheets clinging, she trembled with her lips open against the airy half-light of her moonlit room. Trying hard to breathe, she thought to herself that she’d dreamed of death, that she’d never been more afraid in her years than she was of descending back into that dream. For hours, she fought with her weary eyes, agonizing over wakefulness until the narrowest hours of the morning when she dropped back into trembling unconsciousness.
Three days later she was unafraid, standing among the inexorable tempest with her eyes pressed shut and her arms at her sides. On the last night, she came to the understanding that the lashing around her was like tendrils or tentacles… prehensile and sensitive, that she could move them in thought and desire. They could feel what her eyes could not see, what her arms could not reach to brace.
The next day, she could barely hold herself to the earth. There was immense, inexplicable excitement coursing in the threads of her veins. Excusing herself early from the dinner table, Angie retired early to bed and clamped down her eyelids, willing herself hastily into sleep. She awoke exhausted and perplexed, harried as if she’d not slept at all. The light that crawled through her window was dim and dusky; it had rained all week and was drier this morning, though the sky was far from clear. Angel spent a few moments sorting the darkness in her room from the darkness of her dream, the unkind embrace that had not paid her visit as expected, but was interrupted by a gently knocking at her door.
“I’m awake.” She all but whispered, gathering her bedclothes to herself as she sat up in bed, legs folded shakily beneath her. Her aunt came in as she was rubbing her eyes, stubbornly trying to wake. Her hair was tangled, her chest achy… Angel felt almost as if she’d been running. For her part, Aunt Marx was seemingly unaware of her poor condition – and this was for the better. Her Aunt and Uncle had never had children of her own, and her aunt had become a truly doting mother since Angie’s adoption at two. She would have been distressed to know anything of Angel’s discomfort, especially when it so was sourceless and thusly without cure as it was this morning.
“We’ve good news for you, my cherub.” Beaming prettily, her aunt sat down on the edge of the bed, folding her hands in her apron. Something inside of Angel softened to see this woman, ever affectionate and thankful, quiet and cloud-soft, warm in every gesture. Her smile was delicate and pale, damask cheeks hiding almost flawlessly a history of faltering, frail health that had driven a bad wedge between herself and her first husband, a few years before Angie’s birth.
After a moment, Angel realized that her aunt was waiting for her to speak. Mustering a closed-mouth “Hmm?” behind half a sleepy smile. She had, in the face of her other thoughts this morning, frank disinterest in the progress of her schooling arrangements, the unpacking – new things and old things for the house – and the whole business of this foreign land. She couldn’t find it in her heart, however, to do anything but feign anticipation and keep here eyes on those of her aunt.
The older woman stopped, pursing her lips into a smile, and stood abruptly.
“Oh, I do want it to be a surprise. You’d best wash up and get dressed, dear, and come downstairs for breakfast.”
Gazing strangely after her departing aunt, Angel pushed herself off the edge of the bed and flitted toward the washroom. From below wafted the mythical aroma of cinnamon bread and coffee. Breakfast was no ritual in the Marx household, so it was strange that her aunt would have risen early to bake for anything but the most special of occasions. Her mind cycled through the dates; they were nowhere near any birthdays, anniversaries, or real holidays. Perhaps, she thought, this was her surprise… a happy comfort-meal to celebrate their new settlement.
Pete blinked wearily at the early sunlight, pushing his hair off of his forehead with a scrubbed hand. At first, when his mother had bustled into his sparse bedroom, he’d panicked, thinking that surely he’d overslept for church. By the time coherency of the fact that it was the day before Mass, she already had him buttoned into a clean jacket, was smoothing his rumpled hair. It was about this time