Shuttered Sky

City, and now she had little Memo.

She had always believed that her face was a judgment for something she had done, or would someday do. The priest said she had more than done her penance for having Memo out of the sacrament of marriage, but she was never quite sure. So it became her way to turn her thoughts to God as she pruned and planted flowers, tending the garden path her mother had so loved. Fragrant lilies, and bright, gold-petalled plumeria. An hour among the rich plumeria would perfume her skin with its sweet fragrance. It made her feel beautiful, and so she lingered there, waiting for forgiveness or damnation. Waiting for something to happen that might define her life in terms as vibrant as the flowers around her.

The gate labored open, admitted a ship, then labored closed.

Eight-year-old Guillermo “Memo” Ceballos often sat on the rocks by the edge of the lake, his palm spread across the stone. If you touched the stones by the shore, you could actually feel the gate closing before you heard it. Feeling the resonance of the gates through his bones connected him to this place, and he secretly longed to pilot the canal like his grandfather Carlos, although his mother wanted more for him. It’s why she made him learn English, and always spoke of his uncles, and how successful they were in far-off places.

He didn’t argue with her. So for now, he was content to sit at the end of the little dock and fish, watching the great ships pass, imagining himself piloting them through the canal gates. Imagining that they weren’t mere oceangoing vessels, but spaceships in disguise, bound for starports far beyond the Atlantic or Pacific.

There was power in being an observer; knowing the cycle of the ships, each returning on their own schedule, but yet as regular as the phases of the moon. The ships always came back to him, on his lake. There was satisfaction in knowing that his little fishing dock sat smack in the middle of the greatest crossroads of the world.

His feet dangling over the edge of the dock, he reeled in his line to reveal that his bait was gone.

“There are no fish in Miraflores,” Abuelo Carlos often told him when he spent such long hours with his line in the water. It wasn’t true, of course. Certainly fish were harder to come by than in the larger Gatun Lake, but they were here. They were not good to eat, though, what with the oily sheen that covered the overtraveled lake.

“Sometime I’ll take you out in the Pacific,” his grandfather end­lessly promised. For those were waters rich in porgy and striped tuna. This was the “abundance of fish” for which Panama was named, not the troubled waters of Miraflores.

Memo cut a juicy bloodworm in half, then wove it onto the hook, which stuck out from the end of his lure: a silver, tear-shaped sparkler.

The shiny lure had been made from one of his late grandmother’s old earrings. He knew she wouldn’t have minded. Some fish smell the blood, Abuelo Carlos had taught him, others were drawn to the shine of the lure. The important thing was to give them what they want. Memo knew if he offered them what they couldn’t resist, even the lonely fish of Miraflores could be caught. So he threw in his line, dreaming of cruise ships and starships, and waited with an anticipation that never waned.

The gate opened. The gate closed.

A point of light appeared in the air just beyond the end of Memo’s dock.

The reflection off the shell of a beetle, Memo thought. Except for the fact that the pinprick of light didn’t move.

A sudden breeze moved across the surface of the lake. It hit the shore, then doubled back again, picking up petals and leaves, kicking up a sweet, earthy smell. The breeze danced like a living thing; Memo watched the path of leaves and petals circling the piles of the dock, then the breeze came to him, swirling around him, slithering like a snake about to constrict. Then all at once the breeze died, and the petals and leaves fell from him to the wooden slats of the dock.

The point of light was still there, a few feet out, off the end of the dock, ten feet in the air—but it was more than just a point now. It was growing. The light fed itself, billowing out from its center, until it was an orb the size of a soccer ball, shifting with colors so bright he feared they might blind him, but so beautiful he could not look away.

“Mama,” he called out, “Abuelo!”

They did not hear him call, but they were already running, for something had been stirred inside them.

Memo now stood, toes curled over the end of the dock, leaning forward as far as his balance would allow, reaching a hand toward the growing ball of light. He had heard of ball lightning, but knew this was something else. Like the wind, it was alive. And calling to him.

“Guillermo Gabriel Cuevas Ceballos,” they said—for there was more than one voice, more than one spirit within the ball of light. And then he realized it wasn’t a ball at all. It was a porthole, like on the many ships that passed. An opening to another place. “Guillermo Gabriel Cue­vas Ceballos,” they said. “It is you we seek.”

His mother heard it, too, but it wasn’t Memo’s name she heard—it was her own. And Carlos, bounding down the hillside, was certain these voices were calling to him. “I am here,” he shouted. “Gabriela, I am here,” for he was certain that the voice he heard first and foremost was that of his dead wife.

Cerilla, then Carlos came bounding onto the dock, for this hole of light had more than just pulled their focus—it filled the absence of focus that had been building in their lives. This uncanny visitation was Carlos’s unfinished business. It was his daughter’s defining moment. It was the tug at the end of Memo’s line that he had been waiting for all this time. How could it not steal their attention? How could they not drop everything for it?

And now the three of them stood there, side by side at the end of the dock, the shimmering hole of light filling all of their thoughts and senses, leaving no room for anything else.

The hole spread wider, the clouds in the sky beyond it distorting, straining as space stretched for the growing hole of light. Hairline frac­tures began to form in the space around hole, like the aged canvas of a medieval painting.

And in that bright light, three figures began to take definition.

There was no mistaking who stood within the breach, because the boy, the woman, and the old man saw them, if not with their squinted eyes, with their minds—with their souls.

It was undeniable to Carlos Ceballos that this was the spirit of his wife, flanked by two gossamer-winged angels of light.

It was undeniable to Cerilla Ceballos that this was God the Father, with the Son on his right hand, and the holy spirit to his left.

It was undeniable to Memo Ceballos that these were the aliens he had seen in the movies, come to take him away from a sedate, fatherless world.

There was no question who they were.

“We have come to you,” their voices intoned.

“To ease your pain.”

“To grant you salvation.”

“To take you away.”

“If only you open.”

“If only you invite.”

“If only you grant us admission to dwell in your world, your home, your flesh.”

“For we have come to you, and you alone.”

“Take us in.”

Their minds told them it was all they ever wanted. Their hearts told them that it was right, that it was true, and their flesh longed to be vessels for such extraordinary light.

“Yes,” they told them.

“Yes, fill me with your love.”

“With your glory.”

“With your strangeness.”

“Yes,” they said. “Enter in.”

A gate flung open. The sky shattered like a windshield hit by a bullet. A blast of living light blew them off their feet. And for an instant there was surprise, and the pain of the hook. A red tendril of living light snared them, ripping them free from themselves, and dragged them down a slick gullet where nothing awaited them but