crackles and a gentle electric current rolls through my body. Before I can climb all the way onto the probe, it starts to lift.
The burning on my skin cools as soon as I am out of the gel. I allow myself a few seconds of relief as the probe lifts through the ceiling into a new room and a floor closes underneath us. The thump of people dropping down from the probes is the first thing I hear. Then feet scattering.
“Run!” people start to yell, “Ruuuuunnnnnn.”
They scatter—hopping, crawling, rushing. No one seems to know which way to go. I can finally use my feet, but I am faltering. I turn around in circles, looking for a door, a window, a hint of light, anything that can show me the way out. But all I see is rows and rows of probes hemming us in; I can’t even figure out the shape of the room we’re in.
I hear a faint sound.
“Ahhhh-lay-lay-lay. Ah-la, lay, lay, lay. Ahhhh-lay-lay-lay. Ah-la, lay, lay, lay.”
You are singing. For a few seconds I am paralyzed with grief, stricken by the certainty that I will never see you again. Then I see it, a purple mist spreading through the room. Your song seems to beckon to me, growing faint then pulsing in one particular corner. I follow your voice from one end of the room to the other. Every time I think you have led me to the way out, the light I am walking toward dissipates.
The mist quickly fills the room, growing so thick that I can no longer see. I hear breathing around me. It sounds heavy and panicked. A suffocating sweetness blossoms in the back of my throat. My limbs begin to tingle. A loud chattering breaks out behind me. The last clear thought I have is that if I can find the voices, I can find the exit. I twist around and run. After a few steps, I bang into a probe, then trip over something large. I’m sure it’s a body, but my mind is too jumbled to process the thought. I ignore my mounting hysteria and latch onto the image of me running. I force my limbs forward, but gravity overtakes me and starts dragging me down. My eyes roll back in my head, and my ears stop registering sound. Before I drop, someone shoves me from behind. I stumble and follow the crush of bodies. Suddenly the air is different—sharp, crisp, no mist. A weak thrill vibrates through me, then I fall face-first onto the ground.
Suddenly I’m lying on a bed of soft green leaves. There’s no noisy, painful time shift, but I’m in a different place. Not home, but my arms are nestled around you. You have flowers tucked behind your ear and gold beads in your braids. You’re holding me with an easy comfort, almost as if you’ve held me many times before, as if you know you’ll be holding me many times again.
I snuggle closer to you.
“Time to go,” you whisper before kissing me on my jaw.
I feel someone shaking me.
“Time to go,” a voice says.
Then I hear that wet flapping sound. It whips through me like an alarm. My eyes pop open. I climb to my feet. Dead leaves and dried insect wings flutter off me. I grab my guide in an awkward fumbling embrace. Why am I still here?
“Let’s move,” he says and hops away before I can ask how he found me. He leans on a branch for balance, moving with surprising quickness for a one-legged man.
I follow, taking quick glances around while I hustle behind him. On one side of us is the base of a cliff. We are traveling on a narrow path that cuts through a tangle of overgrowth that has managed to flourish in the massive shadow of a mountain. On the other side of us is a dark forest; cool air rolls out from between the tress and licks at our cheeks and ears. Every twenty feet or so, my guide stops and peers into the forest. He’s too far ahead for me to ask what he’s doing.
A shriek cuts through my thoughts, then I see people running. Without a word to me, my guide races forward, hopping as fast as he can toward a cluster of people staring into the forest. He pushes past them and, by the time I draw near, he has disappeared into the mass of altered limbs.
I push into the crowd too, struggling to keep pace with my guide.
“This it?” my guide asks, motioning to a large cave.
Someone grunts. My guide looks at me. I take a step forward. He stares at me for a few long seconds, then he blinks.
“Going in,” he says. When he turns away I know that was goodbye.
He hops into the cave opening. A curtain of pastel-hued light shimmers as he enters, and then he’s gone. My heart goes wild with fear. I don’t think I can take another world, another blow, another scar, but I am instantly overtaken with terror that I’m being left behind.
When I step inside the cave, I’m assaulted with light. The light is everywhere. The strongest glow comes from deep within the cave where the light’s intensity is amplified by discarded metal rods and glass tubing littering the floor. Shielding my eyes from the glare, I walk deeper into the cave. I feel the temperature drop right when I find my guide. He is standing at the back of the cave in front of an old wooden table. On the other side of the table is the Man—I’m pretty sure it’s the Man. He is massive, intimidating. His dark robes do nothing to disguise the broadness of his shoulders. His head is shaven clean, and I can’t see his eyes—they are covered by plastic welding goggles. He taps his hand impatiently on the tabletop.
My guide gestures, pointing at something on the table. The Man lifts one hand and shoves the goggles off his eyes and leaves them to rest on his forehead. He says something to my guide. My guide nods. The Man says something else, and my guide says, “I promise.”
He picks up a cup from the table and drinks from it, then he disappears right before my eyes.
My heart convulses, but before my thoughts can whip into a frenzy, the Man yells, “Next!”
He doesn’t bother to look up when I stand before his table.
“Your things,” he says. I pull out the feather and place it on the table. Pinch by pinch, I pile the sand into a mound. Then I get the cup of perspiration out of my pocket and place it on the table. It has gone stiff in the middle where my guide pinched it. It tilts to the side, but the liquid has not leaked out.
The Man picks up my feather and inspects it. Its iridescence takes me back to the man with the glossy hair, his watchful eyes, his fierce spirit. The Man sets the feather back on the table and pokes his fingers into the sand, flattening my pile. Memories of the girl who watched her parents die run through me. By the time he picks up the cup, I am remembering the scar that wailed to keep me safe. The Man sniffs the cup, turning it around in his fingers, then places it back on the table. He clasps his hands in front of him.
“What is freedom?” he asks. He tilts his head back and looks up at me
I gasp.
There is no mistaking those features. The thickness of the eyebrows, the thinness of the nose, the full bottom lip, the scar on his left jawline.
“Grandfather?”
Not a flicker of recognition passes through the Man’s eyes. He doesn’t repeat his question, but the intensity of his stare lets me know that he is waiting for my response.
A thousand thoughts go spinning through my head. I don’t want to be afraid, but I am. How much of Grandfather is in this man’s body? I flash back to the rows of men shackled behind me in the courthouse. I remember the long snaking line of women plodding through the desert. I know what freedom is not.
The man who may be my grandfather bangs his hand on the table.
“Many are waiting. Do you have an answer?”
“I’m…” I wet my lips.
I think about my body, my real body, loose-limbed and free. I remember the Royale, how it always made me feel: flush-faced, high on adrenaline, disconnected from everything ordinary, locked in some ancient formula of ferocity and flight.
The man with a hand for a tongue didn’t prepare me for this.
“Freedom is the ability to be whatever you want—without control, violence, force, or limitations.”
Grandfather takes a closer look at me then. He squints as if sizing me up.
“Why do you deserve to be free?”
“Everyone deserves to be free,” I snap.
A slight smile creases Grandfather’s lips; then his seriousness swallows his pleasure, and he continues his inquisition.
“What will you do with your freedom?”
