SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

At work, Trake wants to end the project. He fears a world where the box can be used in ways that it shouldn’t. He fears our people over-running an infinite worlds with our careless conquests. He fears unimaginable acts once only possible in dreams, God’s great gate into mystery used for the pettiest of desires. It’s too late for that. I’m already there.

Flicker. Flicker. Flicker. One more, before my eyes curl closed against the rising sun. One more room, not broken and buried, not wreathed in purple fire nor drowned in sand the color of coral. One more room, spattered with crayon filled drawings, a beautiful coffee colored child draped in a sea of black curls under the moss colored comforter, a knife’s edge away from my Xikele.

The room flutters into being behind the feathered sheen of merging skeins. I gasp—an indrawn breath that burns into my lungs and turns my heartbeat into thunder beneath my skin. I turn the machine off and soak in every detail of the room in our house, Xikele’s room. I see the misaligned crayon drawings snaking across the back room, the stuffed toys stacked in leaning piles against the corner, a knit sweater now gray with dust lying on the floor, a single arm curled and pointing towards the hall.

I press the button, hearing the stutter and whine, the flicker and the flap. The floor is slick and shiny, free of dust and mold, but the stuffed toys still lean like organic sculptures against the corner. The same drawings are there, a few more I’ve never seen stuck in odd places, but the ones I know by heart—the ones I memorized in the days after she left—those lie in place on the wall, off kilter as Xikele always liked.

I’ve avoided looking at the bed, though it lies in front of me. I’ve blurred it out of my vision, so I could look only when I was ready. My heart rends every time it hangs so close, its unbearable, though every night I sit in this cage and try again. I let my eyes unblur, starting from the foot of the bed, following the comforter from the wide meadow where the bed was too long for her tiny body. The meadow leans up into the hill of her feet, gently rising in delicate folds until I make out arms wrapped around the dun colored bear toy that Xikele loved so well.

The round almond of her face, like coffee after I’ve added the first drops of milk, lies serene against the pillow. Her beautiful black hair, so like my own, danced slowly in the air as she breathed. I stop breathing for fear the moment will pass. I must drink of this moment like sweet nectar from the blossom strewn fields of heaven. As I hung suspended in hope, she stirred, the eyes gently opening, slanted in a gentle arabesque like Kuan’s own.

"Mama?"

My breath releases like a thunderclap.

"Yes, sweetie?"

"Why are you covered in feathers?"

In the hall, a light switches open. I must be quick—if I do not do this now, I will never have the courage to do so again.

"Come give Mama a hug, sweetie?"

She clambers out of bed and stands against the edge of the field boundary. I can see she’s not quite awake yet, or there would have been more questions. I reach out, the skein as slick as my sweated palms. I take her hand and pull. The skein windows around her, gel like bubbles erupting around the gap. Like a caterpillar crawling out of its cocoon, she falls into the inside of my skein, fingers of the reality outside still wrapped like a barely visible caul around her. I hear footsteps in the hall, loud as the drumbeat of my heart. I press the button. Flicker. As I stare at the dissolving skein around me, I see the drawing on the wall, two stick figure mothers and a child, blurred by the unfolding skein. I make out the dark crayon tresses of my hair in the image before my own skein flickers into place, the dust and the mold shining from the lambent light of the box. I turn the box off, still feeling Xikele’s reassuring hand in my own.

"Mama, its so dusty all of a sudden! This feels like a strange dream and my tummy feels funny."

Joy unfurls, like the first bloom of spring. I envelop her in my arms, so tight she squirms against it.

"What’s wrong Mama? What’s wrong?"

"Nothing’s wrong Xikele, nothing’s wrong." There is a river of tears in me, a great Nile of tears, but for Xikele’s comfort, I hold it back.

"Everything’s right baby, everything is right. Mama’s here."

"I’m tired Mama, can I go back to bed now?" Xikele rubs her eyes, wiping away my sweat from her skin.

"Ok Xikele, I’m just going to wait here for a bit until you fall asleep."

"Okay Mama."

The tiredness claims her and she snuggles into the dusty comforter. In the morning there will be time to clean, to rebuild, to show Kuan and to wind time back across the great chasm of sorrow in which we had spent the last year. A new day was dawning, a new spring bloom. I look at the box again, making sure its telltale lights were off, reassuring myself that I was in my own skein, and she was there. We had gone through fire and flame, Kuan and I, we had burned ourself clean to the bone, but this—this would thread us back together. I held myself back from sleep, soaking in every diamond sharp moment, but sleep claimed me anyway.

I juddered awake, my heart like the gallop of horses. She was gone. She was gone. Stop. Breathe. Look. I count myself to ten to slow the spiraling world down. The comforter, long folded into its perfect geometric line, was disheveled and flung open, the memory of a child’s shape still pressed into it. I stood up, my bones creaking, and walked into the hall.

Inside the kitchen at the end of the long hall, I could hear the clink and plink of fork against bowl, and the slow slurp of coffee being sipped. Xikele stood just outside the arch of the kitchen, hidden in the shadow, face flush with fear. Feather streaks still hung around her arms and legs, though most had faded—she was settling into our skein slowly but surely.

Kuan would be in the kitchen. Had she seen Xikele? I would likely have heard. I bent down, my face against Xikele’s own. I hold her hand reassuringly. It is flesh warm and not skein slick as I feared. I whisper into her ear,

"What’s wrong sweetie?"

Her eyes look at me, slightly vibrating, tiny feather streaks glistening in and out of being on her eyelids.

"There’s a ghost in the kitchen, Mama." Her quiet, fearful whisper back.

"There’s no ghost there sweetie, I’ll show you. Come."

I take her hand as she sidles up against me, walking together into the kitchen. The ceramic bowl falls from Kuan’s hands first, shattering against the kitchen counter. A silence like the shaking of mountains unfurls, broken by Xikele’s tiny plaintive voice.

"Mama Kuan?"

Kuan wails Xikele’s name, bursting across the kitchen floor to envelop Xikele in her arms, all her fears and words of darkness shattered by the simple truth of Xikele’s presence.

"I missed you so much Xikele, I missed you so much, I missed you so." Kuan continues to repeat the words, burrowing her face into Xikele’s neck. I feel the cascade of time being drawn back, a rewinding to a time and place a year ago, the three of us unbroken. Xikele holds Kuan tight, her tiny arms clenched around Kuan’s delicate body.

"I missed you too, Mama Kuan, I thought you went away. I thought you went away forever." Simple words. Such simple words, like iron nails hammering into my bones. Like the fallen porcelain, I shatter into shards. The blurred drawing against the wall as Xikele’s skein dissolved flashes like lightning in my mind. I see the details of it, etched in sharp relief. In our wall, two stick figures surround Xikele’s tiny form, one in chocolate and black, another in ochre. The drawing in my memory from the other skein rises up and swallows me. Kuan’s figure was scratched out. Another mistake. The last one simply evaporated, she did not know Kuan, and that un-knowledge resolved her intersection with our skein into redaction. This Xikele knew Kuan, and had lost Kuan. I don’t know how the mathematics of this resolution will work out. It is as unclear and mysterious as the box, and the fear is exploding in me.