EIGHT - The Two Prince Charmings

And now Ricci stood before me as a young man, bones and marrow, beating heart, red faced and shallow breathing. I watched him looking at her while I gripped Arous’ small hand in mine.

“Come my Sulche, my sweet. Meet a visitor,” said the Diofe.

“Yes, Daddy,” said Arous. She ran to him and jumped into his lap.

 “Dad! He a sleeping person?  He all amber, like the Mist.”

The Diofe couldn’t help but laugh at her.

“You must put everything in a box.  You are so human.”

“He came from the Mist?”

“No,” said Ricci. “I heard what a beautiful, special little girl you were.  I came to see you.”

“See me?” Arous gasped. “Now, I famous as you, Daddy?”

The Diofe laughed again.

“No, sweetheart. He drove across the bridge. He’s from the Cusp of Alippiana.”

“Daddy, paint picture me and Eawi. Here are me and you and Eawi.”

“That was very nice of you and Edlawit,” he said looking down at the pictures.

“Love you, Daddy.”

The magic moving pictures were smeared with little girl fingerprints as the shapes danced. Ricci sat slackjawed.

“Wow. Those are good. How did you learn to do that, Arous?”

“SkinDancer teach me. And Daddy,” she gasped again excited. “Show you. Not since yesterday seen you me!”

Arous walked over to me. Edlawit was hiding behind my legs. Arous pulled her into view holding her by both hands and staring into her eyes.  Edlawit grinned.

“Daddy, watch.  Watch Daddy,” she paused. “And Daddy’s friend. Watch you me.”

In a flash there were two Edlawits standing there.  Arous-as-Edlawit giggled and turned to Ricci.

“My special gift.  Daddy?”

“She skin-dances?” Ricci turned to the Diofe but the Diofe didn’t answer.

Ricci turned back to Arous.

“That is special.” The way he smiled at her made the hair on the back of my neck take notice. “You are a very special girl.” Then he choked; Ricci was in love.

We all were in love with Arous.  It was hard not to be.

“I love you, Daddy,” said Arous and Edlawit in stereo.

“Can we go play?” asked Edlawit.

“Of course,” the Diofe smiled holding each cheek in his hand. “Go see if Priscilla can tell you apart!”

Both girls raced out of the room calling “Pris, Pris!”

Ricci flinched so that his corkscrew hair covered his eyes.

He rose, nodded to the Diofe, walked out of the door and into his car in the driveway. He didn’t look back at Arous and he didn’t wave good-bye to us on the porch. He left the Bowl and our lives.

“Migi, who’s that? That man. Knows he me? Feel him I, Migi. Feel him.”

“He’s a young man leaving his life here and going to the City out west to make his fortune.”

“Oh.”

“We won’t see him again for a long time,” I said.

“Really? I make sure. Draw him me, next time. Remind you me.”

She jumped from my arms and ran off with Edlawit into the meadow. I got a glimmer of a vision of Miasmen and fading poisajos and a smiling Ricci: older, confident, charming. The sight vanished before I could place any of it. I didn’t think of it again until my mind-sight caught up with it in possible time thirteen years later on a night that was too warm for Spring.

By then, Edlawit had lost her little lamb and Arous had run away. 

            That’s when Arous met him. Them.

            Even for me, it was hard to tell them apart, the loyal friend from the one loyal to Ricci.  Edlawit would prove to be better at loyalty.

            Once upon a time there were two Prince Charmings . . .

SEVEN - She's Here

“Now, you get out of here.  The last thing we need is your negative spirit,” Bertha said as she threw a wet towel at her. She then turned to soothe the laboring girl, like a mother blowing a daughter’s scraped knee.

“You just relax now.  Breathe. And I’ll be back in a minute.”

She was striking in appearance. A few considered her beautiful, most people thought she was peculiar, or even abnormal.  Her ivory skin hinted iridescence, fairylike.

The Diofe sat in a rocking chair, looking small and still. His head bowed, his eyes closed and his whole body pointing in the girl’s direction. A minute would pass, and he would open his eyes and look at his hands. When the girl writhed in pain, he would glance up at her. As she caught the smile in his eyes, she would settle as if his glance balmed her soul. 

I could see his spirit going out to her, soothing.  Something of the amber mist swirled about him and over to her.  His nimbus sparkled in the color of an emerald. I could see it but doubted if anyone else could.

Hours later, as the full moon gaze in through the window, her skin glistened with lavender-platinum hue. 

“It seems so much easier now than this morning, somehow. I feel  . . . helped.”

The girl looked up at me. Her body tensed.  Her head jerked back.  I looked out at the full moon high in the sky, at its strongest altitude, its climax.

“There is room in the Bowl for you, you know.  You can come, raise your own daughter,” I said.

She didn’t say anything. I noticed her knuckles were white as they fisted the sheets.

“Breathe!” Bertha charged back in the room throwing a towel at me. “Why are asking her questions?” It’s time to push!”

I held the confused baby girl in my arms, so precious and beautiful, and a bloody, screaming mess.  She dazzled me with those willful violet eyes, for a moment looking through to her spirit. She wouldn’t blink, so she wailed.

I laid her on her mother’s chest while we three stood watching mother caress baby for what felt like an eternity.

Bertha snatched the bowl of salt from the bitter cousin who was standing in the threshold again. I turned to the Diofe and saw him smiling. With face aglow, the Diofe held out his arms to take her. As he reached for the baby, she got quiet. Her eyes opened wide to take in what she could of his beaming face. He cleaned her with the towel, rubbed little precious down with salt and swaddled her in a silk blanket. He walked to the bed and placed the newborn baby girl in her mother’s arms. Settling down, the baby took a deep breath in.

“Arous,” the girl said stroking the baby’s face.

“A beautiful name,” said the Diofe.

“It’s okay to call her that?”

“She’s your daughter,” he said.

The Diofe sat on the bed with the young mother’s head in his lap. He hummed and stroked her hair. She slept. I took the baby from her mother’s limp arms. I placed the baby in the basket. The light from the full room streamed in through the open windows. A compassionate breeze cooled the room. The fan blade purred as it swirled about the ceiling. Inviting and reflecting the energy of the moon’s strongest rays, the white curtains fluttered. The Diofe had taken his chair and placed it beside the large bed. He reached under the covers to grab the girl’s hand and put it in his lap so that he could continue to hum and caress her palm.

“She’ll be gone, soon, Miguel. To chase Ricci.”

“I wish she’d come with us.”

“In the City, people will love her. Idolize her. She’ll almost become a myth. Nothing like the contempt thrown at her here.”

“And, Arous?” I asked. “Edalwit will be happy to have friend.”

“Arous will be happy to be with us for awhile. We’ll need to teach Edlawit well about grace. She’ll need it for herself and for Arous.”

“And the Thirteen?” I asked.  “We need to train them both how to fight. And their gifts. And how to find the third.”

“Miguel,” he said almost laughing. “You get everything out of order. First we must teach them about themselves.”

“And about you,” I said. Several thousand years ago, I would’ve been ashamed that I didn’t put him first. Now I knew him too well to be ashamed of my own short comings.

He paused and looked over at the baby girl in her basked watching us.

“Arous,” I said. “You have a friend, Edlawit. Who is fire and longsuffering and loyal and strong.”

“Arous,” he said. “Arous the stubborn. Arous the brave. Arous of the Thirteen.”

In the basket, a set of determined eyes gazed at him and then trembled to sleep.

SIX - She's Coming

Arous wasn’t hard to find. She had been leaning with her ear to the door of the Willing Room and had attempted to pretend that she and Edlawit were finger-painting in the hall: their pictures dry, hands clean. She heard nothing for all her efforts. Ricci gawked as I led her into the room. The reflection in his eyes heaved like a draft horse pulling an overloaded cart through the mud. I tilted back to a warm summer day not quite three years earlier when I first saw her willful eyes looking up into mine.


I remember her face was puffed, reddened by the screaming. She had been forced from her dark comfort into the bright light.

Bertha met us at the door of the house in Alippiana Cusp. She was a round woman who maintained impressive laugh lines on her forehead and around her mouth and eyes. That day, she sported a broken arm. I entered behind the Diofe and had yet to take off my hat when Bertha stopped and said: “My arm’s broke. You’re going to have to grab her. I can’t be expected to handle her like this.”

“But I -” I tried to protest.

“But someone’s got to be there to catch her when she’s born,” she said.

Dark wooden planks ran along the floor. They were not stained by some exotic dye but many feet and a long life. The ceilings ran high and many windows opened along the height of the walls. Smells of magnolia and cate jasmine infused the house, lessening and increasing, wafting through as a gentle spirit.

We walked up wide stairs into the bedroom where the young woman lay in her sweat-drenched bed. The white curtains in the room matched sun-blanched sheet on the four-poster bed which held the girl. The tired sheets hung off the mattress while curtains ebbed and flowed in the breeze. The windows opened to the sun and the fan, bobbing near the ceiling, whirled. Heat remained.


As we entered the room, the girl grasped the sheets in her hand. After a minute, she let them go and exhaled.

Bertha leaned over the bed. “Your time of running is about over. Relax now. Breathe. Don’t push. It’s not time yet.”

I sat down on the edge of the bed, near the foot. I would say that I wanted to get closer, but that would be a lie.

“You’re here,” the girl whispered just louder than the tick-whir of the fan above us.

“Yes. Miguel and the Diofe are here. Miguel’s here to help me out. He’ll be your little girl’s first contact with the human world,” said Bertha.

After a few minutes, Bertha turned to me as if I needed an update.

“They’re still 45 minutes apart.”

“It’s been hours,” the girl groaned.

 “Hush, sweet,” said Bertha.

A jealous cousin came in carrying a large glass pitcher of water and placed it on the bedside table. She stood there looking down at the young girl chewing her bottom lip.

“Pour a glass of water,” Bertha said to the cousin.

The smirking cousin poured.

Bertha put her hand under the laboring girl’s head and lifted her up so her that lips could meet the cool glass of water.

“I know you’re tired, darling, just try to drink some water.”

The cousin had propped herself up against the doorframe. “Shouldn’t have messed with that boy Ricci but what do you expect from a stupid Lunese. No wonder there not good for anything but slavery.”

“Now, you get out of here. The last thing we need is your negative spirit,” Bertha said as she threw a wet towel at her.



She would turn out to be anything but stupid.

Compared the locals, the Amalgamese, who were a mix of fair-skinned and dark-skinned races over 1000 years, she was abnormal. Her ivory skin hinted iridescence, fairylike. Like the face of the moon.

There’s a good explanation for that: she was from the moon.

Long ago, a people were found living below the surface of the moon in a vast network of underground villages. Modern underground cities are now based on that engineering model. The people were hospitable, so much so, they made it all the way to earth into their own private slavedom and given the name Lunese.

Not so long ago, they began to stop reproducing and dying. Their slavery was outlawed. That didn’t stop them from dying and they were soon all gone.

Bertha could never have children.

One day she found a baby girl lying in a moon-rock-filled crater in a field. She raised this Lunese girl as her own.

People thought she must carry diseases and thought she should be put out of her misery.

Bertha said, “No.”

Bertha was a stubborn woman.