Margaret Stohl - Icons

Heaven, not their graves.

Angels, not aliens.

But just because something comes from the sky doesn’t make it an angel. The Lords didn’t come here from the heavens to save us. They came from some faraway solar system to colonize our planet, on The Day. We don’t know what they look like inside their ships, but they’re not angels. They destroyed my family the year I was born. What kind of angel would do that?

Now we call them the House of Lords—and Ambassador Amare, she tells us not to fear them—but we do.

Just as we fear her.

On The Day, the dead dropped silently in their homes, never seeing what hit them. Never knowing anything about our new Lords, about the way they could use their Icons to control the energy that flowed through our own bodies, our machines, our cities.

About how they could stop it.

Either way, my family is gone. There was no reason for me to have survived. Nobody understood why I did.

The Padre suspected, of course. That’s why he took me.

First me, and then Ro.

I hear a sound from the far end of the chapel.

I squint, turning my back to the door.

The Padre has sent for me, but he’s late. I catch the eye of the Lady from the painting on the wall. Her face is so sad, I think she knows what has happened. I think she knows everything. She’s part of what General Ambassador to the Planet Hiro Miyazawa, the head of the United Embassies, calls the old ways of humanity. How we believed in ourselves—how we survived ourselves. What we looked up to, back when we thought there was someone up above.

Not something.

I look back to the Lady a moment longer, until the sadness surges and the pain radiates through me. It pulses from my temples and I feel my mind stumble, folding at the edge of unconsciousness. Something is wrong. It must be, for the familiar ache to come on so suddenly. I press my hand to my temple, willing it to stop. I breathe deep, until I can see clearly.

“Padre?”

My voice echoes against the wood and stone. It sounds as small as I am. An animal has lurched into my leg, one of many more entering the chapel, and my nostrils fill with smells—hair and hides and hooves, paint and mold and manure. My birthday falls on the Blessing of the Animals, which will begin just hours from now. Local Grass farmers and ranchers will come to have the Padre bless their livestock, as they have for three hundred years. It is Grass tradition, and we are a Grass Mission.

Appearing in the door, the Padre smiles at me, moving to light the ceremonial candles. Then his smile fades. “Where’s Furo? Bigger and Biggest haven’t seen him at all this morning.”

I shrug. I can’t account for every second of Ro’s day. Ro could be lifting all the dried cereal cakes out of Bigger’s emergency supplies. Chasing Biggest’s donkeys. Sneaking down the Tracks toward the Hole, to buy more parts for the Padre’s busted-up old pistola , shot only on New Year’s Eve. Meeting people he doesn’t want me to meet, learning things he doesn’t want me to know. Preparing for a war he’ll never fight with an enemy that can’t be defeated.

He’s on his own.

The Padre, preoccupied as always, is no longer paying attention to himself or to me. “Careful …” I catch his elbow, pulling him out of the way of a pile of pig waste. A near miss.

He clicks his tongue and leans down to chuck Ramona Jamona on the chin. “Ramona. Not in the chapel.” It’s an act—really, he doesn’t mind. The big pink pig sleeps in his chamber on cold nights, we all know she does. He loves Ro and me just as he does Ramona—in spite of everything we do and beyond anything he says. He’s the only father we have ever known, and though I call him the Padre, I think of him as my Padre.

“She’s a pig, Padre. She’s going to go wherever she wants. She can’t understand you.”

“Ah, well. It’s only once a year, the Blessing of the Animals. We can clean the floors tomorrow. All Earth’s creatures need our prayers.”

“I know. I don’t mind.” I look to the animals, wondering. The Padre sinks onto a low pew, patting the wood next to him. “We can take a few minutes to ourselves, however. Come. Sit.”

I oblige.

He smiles, touching my chin. “Happy birthday, Dolly.” He holds out a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. It materializes from his robes, a priestly sleight of hand.

Birthday secrets. My book, finally.

I recognize it from his thoughts, from yesterday. He holds it out to me, but his face is not full of joy.

Only sadness.

“Be careful with it. Don’t let it out of your sight. It’s very rare. And it’s about you.”

I drop my hand.

“Doloria.” He says my real name and I stiffen, bracing myself for the words I fear are coming. “I know you don’t like to talk about it, but it’s time we speak of such things. There are people who would harm you, Doloria. I haven’t really told you how I found you, not all of it. Why you survived the attack and your family didn’t. I think you’re ready to hear it now.” He leans closer. “Why I’ve hidden you. Why you’re special. Who you are.”

I’ve been dreading this talk since my tenth birthday. The day he first told me what little I know about who I am and how I am different. That day, over sugar cakes and thick, homemade butter and sun tea, he talked to me slowly about the creeping sadness that came over me, so heavy that my chest fluttered like a startled animal’s and I couldn’t breathe. About the pain that pulsed in my head or came between my shoulder blades. About the nightmares that were so real I was afraid Ro would walk in and find me cold and still in my bed one morning.

As if you really could die from a broken heart.

But the Padre never told me where the feelings came from. That’s one thing even he didn’t know.

I wish someone did.

“Doloria.”

He says my name again to remind me that he knows my secret. He’s the only one, Ro and him. When we’re alone, I let Ro call me Doloria—but even he mostly calls me Dol, or even Dodo. I’m just plain Dolly to everyone else.

Not Doloria Maria de la Cruz. Not a Weeper. Not marked by the lone gray dot on my wrist.

One small circle the color of the sea in the rain.

The one thing that is really me.

My destiny.

Dolor means “sorrow,” in Latin or Greek or some other language from way, way before The Day. BTD. Before everything changed.

“Open it.”

I look at him, uncertain. The candles flicker, and a breeze shudders slowly through the room. Ramona noses closer to the altar, her snout looking for traces of honey on my hand.

I slip my finger through the paper, pulling it loose from the string. Beneath the wrapping is hardly a book, almost more of a journal: the cover is thick, rough burlap, homemade. This is a Grass book, unauthorized, illegal. Most likely preserved by the Rebellion, in spite of and because of the Embassy regulations. Such books are usually on subjects the Ambassadors won’t acknowledge within the world of the Occupation. They are very hard to come by, and extremely valuable.

My eyes well with tears as I read the cover. The Humanity Project: The Icon Children . It looks like it was written by hand.

“No,” I whisper.

“Read it.” He nods. “I was supposed to keep it safe for you and make sure you read it when you were old enough.”

“Who said that? Why?”

“I’m not sure. I discovered the book with a note on the altar, not long after I brought you here. Just read it. It’s time. And nobody knows as much about the subject as this particular author. It’s written by a doctor, it seems, in his own hand.”

“I know enough not to read more.” I look around for Ro. I wish, desperately, he would walk through the chapel door. But the Padre is the Padre, so I open the book to a page he’s marked, and begin to read about myself.