Ancient, Ancient

glass against the concrete floor. The rise of angry voices, followed by soft apology. Tears fall now; then a shaky- voiced reminder of tomorrow’s departure. The threat of the sea and fear of isolation wells up from the floor. The room is as quiet as held breath. Pedro is the first to speak. “We’ve been planning this for two years. I think we’ve deliberated enough. I’m done thinking. When tomorrow comes, my things will be ready, and I will sail.”

Before Pedro’s lips have stopped moving, WaLiLa’s hunterself is gone. Flying at breakneck speed, she returns to the attic where WaLiLa is resting. With a crackle, she rejoins WaLiLa’s body. Immediately the knowledge of Pedro’s journey sinks into WaLiLa’s being-center. She sits up abruptly. She feels as if shards are puncturing her lower back. With stiffness weighing on her bones, she commands her message-center to review her body signals, note which senses are malfunctioning, and identify which poisons are capable of triggering such reactions. It then cross-references those poisons with elements she has come in contact with. Hopelessness washes over her as her message-center comes up with a match: SMOKE SMOKE SMOKE.

She considers the smoke: It has been quietly damaging her systems for weeks, and it is too late for repair. Then she considers Pedro. She doesn’t have time to follow him. Her equilibrium is already damaged. She won’t have the capacity to walk, much less gather nectar in the next few days. WaLiLa twists her arms back and forth. She falls back against the bed as she accepts the truth: death is already promised her. If I am to die anyway, she thinks, the possibility that Pedro’s nectar may be poisoned cannot harm me.

WaLiLa sits up and slides her knees beneath her body. With a fluid, flicking motion from the top of her forehead into the air before her, she reports her decision to the ancestors. Oh great ones, WaLiLa raises curved, outstretched arms. The Earth air is binding its poisonous cords about me. She folds her arms behind her back. This vessel that carries me is no longer strong. She collapses to the right, then collapses to the left. I speak now to expose my failure. Palms outstretched, she crisscrosses her arms at the elbow four times. I cannot connect this human to you. She drops her head and shakes it vigorously from side to side. He is resistant. She snakes her torso forward. He fears me. She rocks her upper body forward and back. I have been ineffective with him. She cleaves her hands in the air, then breaks them apart suddenly. Because I refused to follow your rules. She bends forward weakly from the waist and shakes her head from side to side. I have ingested a lethal substance. She sits erect and stiff, and lowers her right ear to her right shoulder. With death as my insurance. WaLiLa lowers her shoulder blades to the ground. I am free to complete my assignment. She lowers and raises her fists with a constant steady rhythm five times. If his nectar is poisoned, it will die with me. She pounds the air with her fists, then drops her arms lifelessly. If it is not, I shall return to you and deliver the nectar. She pushes a path from her center to the space above her head. Then the smoke damage will bring my death. She lays on her side briefly. She ends by touching her forehead to the bed and rolling her hips.

Her communication ended, WaLiLa lays back in the folds of the blanket and slips into sleep.

7.

As WaLiLa sleeps, night thickens. When the air reaches its blackest point, Pedro rides in on midnight wings. He is surprised to find his mother sleeping in his bed: the cot next to his brother’s. Pedro’s eyes rise up to the ceiling as he visualizes the only empty bed in the apartment: the bed upstairs next to WaLiLa’s. He sits on the floor between the two cots and soaks up his family’s energy. When he can keep his eyes open no longer, he rests his hand gently on his brother’s head, presses his lips to his mother’s cheek, then climbs the stairs. Keeping his back to WaLiLa, Pedro drops his shirt and pants on the floor. He sits on the side of the bed in his boxer shorts, attempting to quell the sadness that claws at his throat every time he imagines leaving his mother and brother behind. Then he lays back, solemnly reclining as though the bed were a coffin. He clutches the images of his mother and his brother closely to him and drifts off to sleep.

WaLiLa’s hunterself thumps on the inside of WaLiLa’s chest for thirty minutes, attempting to alert WaLiLa to Pedro’s presence. After WaLiLa becomes aware of the thumping, she takes another thirty minutes to rouse herself from rest. By the time she releases her hunterself and rises from the bed, Pedro is in a deep sleep. With teeth clenched, WaLiLa drags herself to Pedro’s bedside. Her hunterself flutters around his head. As taught during training, WaLiLa places one hand over his closed eyes and another over his abdomen, her thumb connecting to his navel. Under her velvet touch, Pedro’s eyes do not open. He does not even stir.

WaLiLa closes her eyes and pushes her chin upwards to the skies. As she establishes portals between their two bodies, WaLiLa begins to glow. Her hunterself detects a sound and flies to the stairs, peeking over the banister to investigate. She flies over to WaLiLa and tugs at her ear. When WaLiLa opens her eyes, her hunterself communicates Modesto’s presence at the foot of the stairs. Knowing that Modesto will soon be privy to her actions, WaLiLa tightens her grip on Pedro. She shrugs one shoulder in disappointment. She has never experienced a hunt so fraught with failure.

When Modesto reaches the top of the stairs, a painful sensation rips through WaLiLa’s body. Poison jerks through her torso. It rips into her organs like shards of glass. Modesto stands frozen, transfixed by what he sees. With gritted teeth, WaLiLa flexes her torso, closing off the internal portals through which Pedro’s nectar had entered her body. A loud tearing sound rips through Modesto’s eardrums and breaks his trance.

Modesto screams his brother’s name. As Pedro stirs, WaLiLa pulls herself away from his body and stumbles backward. When Pedro opens his eyes, he sees WaLiLa fall limply onto the bed. Seeing her skin soaked in a dark green liquid causes a mixture of terror and compassion to riot across Modesto’s eyes. Pedro sits up and rubs his temples. When he brings his hand down from his face it is moist. He brings his fingers closer to his eyes and sees green liquid on them. He looks down at his body. His torso is covered with the same liquid. As he jumps up and scrambles away from WaLiLa, the haze of his sleep dissolves.

They will come for me, WaLiLa motions weakly. They will come for me.

Exhausted and delirious, she slides into a deep coma. Long after her lids are closed, she imagines the brothers’ unblinking eyes examining her. She prays that when she opens her eyes she will be home. She pretends that she is already there, wrapping herself in the thick air of her nation until she vanishes into the folds. She imagines herself lying in maroon cloud fields over gold skies. She promises herself that as soon as she’s home, she’ll compete in flying races with her clan and never use her voice again.

8.

When the coma finally lifts from WaLiLa’s body, she pushes her eyelids open to see herself resting in the same small room where her death began. The brothers are gone, but there is a pair of shining eyes staring at her from across the room. When the eyes see motion flicker across WaLiLa’s face, they rise from the camouflage of darkness and float closer to the bed. WaLiLa knows from the weight of the footsteps that the eyes belong to Elisa.

Elisa hovers over the bed, filling WaLiLa’s vision. She pushes a glass against WaLiLa’s lips. WaLiLa turns away. Elisa stands back, places one hand on her hip, and regards her silently. Why Elisa’s face holds no anger or fear is a miracle to WaLiLa. She closes her eyes again, twirling her wrist with the repeated question, Will they come for me?

“They will not come,” Elisa says, chopping through the thick silence of the room with her voice.

WaLiLa’s eyes pop open, and she stares into Elisa’s face. Seconds pass as the two examine each other in silence. Just as she is dismissing Elisa’s announcement as hallucination, Elisa speaks again.

“They are not coming for you.”

WaLiLa rises up onto her elbows and stares at Elisa incredulously. To her surprise, her body does not hurt when she moves it. Only her head throbs with pain.

“Who are you?” WaLiLa demands.

“I am Elisa,” Elisa responds with an amused smile. “I was once a nectar collector, like you, but Pedro’s aunt put an end to that, much as Pedro has done for you.”

“But…” Questions slam through WaLiLa’s mind battling for dominion of her lips. “How long have you been here? Did you know who I was from the beginning?” Then she motions with her arms, Will I die here?

“I’ve lived here longer than I care to remember. I realized what you were after you stole flowers from my