Chương 48: Sew You Up Again [October 6th - January 5th, Age 14]

Even after that, it wasn't easy. I would still wake up every morning in a cold sweat, frozen in my bed with the echo of what I'd lost gripping my brain in its claws. And it would be all I could do to pull myself upright. To use the water from the humidifier we'd set up in there as a sort of training-wheel crutch to feel around the room. The faces of Yoru and Ava and Cygnus and Bell. Those mornings became easier once I stopped wearing the contacts. I took Bell's advice. I let myself die. I went all in.

Everything on the line. One day in November I went down to the lunchroom. Frustrated with how weak I felt in the mornings, and how much the vague light sensitivity reminded me of the colors I'd lost. I went into the back, behind the counter, and rummaged through the boxes of plastic tableware and assorted items until I found the nice cloth napkins we used on special occasions. I pulled one out and felt the length—not long enough as it was, but doubled it would be fine.

With an ice knife I made from a fountain, I cut it in half, almost all the way down, and let the two long strips lay end-to-end, fastened at the corner I left intact. I had a needle and thread I'd borrowed from someone earlier that day—people were much more willing to lend me random things now, I found—and I did my best to sew the short ends together to make one double-length strip. It turned out that sewing while blind was hard. One more for the surprise struggles book.

I took the strip and wrapped it around my head, over my eyes, and tied it off. There was no point in seeing the light. Light sensitivity did nothing for me. If this was my life, then I had to make it so. Nothing in half-measures. No sense in clinging to the shriveled concept of something I would never have again. I took a deep breath in the darkness. It was temporary. It was meaningless. I knew exactly where the door was. I could feel it behind me. I turned around and left.

0 0 0 I wasn't put on any missions for a few months. I don't blame Prochazka for doing that. Even after Christmas, when I felt fine enough, and had been doing okay in practice sparring sessions—the rest of Unit 6, slowly, had gotten on the rehabilitation bandwagon, following Bell's lead—he didn't want anyone to find out what had happened to me. I was a secret weapon again. Let the world think I was gone. It was fine that way. It was better that way.

0 0 0 Christmastime was approaching, but I hadn't thought of any good gift ideas. Call me conceited, but I had more important things on my mind that year. Over the weeks following the event, I compiled a list of things I could no longer do. The absolute last thing I wanted was to realize that some vital part of me, more than what had already gone, was torn out—and I figured the best way to go about that was to face it head-on and give it a good, long thought.

For all the things I found, I did my best to find a work-around. Early on I discovered I could no longer read. That one was easy; Braille solved that problem for people much more blind than I was. Truthfully, I was only partially blind. The enhanced awareness of my surroundings I got through slowly perfecting the droplet-echolocation felt, in a few respects, like an upgrade to regular sight. But it wasn't seeing. It was feeling; it wasn't vision.

0 0 0 One of the first things Ava did for me when she realized that I was going to make it, and that I was not, in fact, going to have to be put down: she went out to a store in Syracuse and bought me six decks of Braille playing cards, so I could keep dealing blackjack whenever we decided we wanted to do that. I could read those fairly easily by just sliding some water over them and feeling where the water was interrupted; and if I was careful about it, the cards wouldn't be slick when I handed them out.

It was slow going at first; and it only got marginally better until Christmas, but it was going. It was possible, and that was all I needed. I could only deal for around an hour before the headache became too much to bear. I'd start getting woozy and non-conversational at around thirty-minutes. After that, if people still wanted to play, Ava would take over for me while I went to take some aspirin and lie down. It was enough to feel like a regular person, though.

More on the subject of reading— I very quickly became frustrated with the lack of Braille-printed books. There simply weren't all that many of them, and they were tough to find in the area. The little town library had a meager selection, and I wasn't fond of walking in there unattended, especially since I was soul-committed to the blindfold at the time and I didn't want people thinking I was a circus act. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

So I'd asked Cygnus to get some for me occasionally, and he did. One day, I was struck by an inspiration. Those bolts of insight happened fairly frequently in those days—they were driven by desperation more than curiosity, but I indulged them all the same. I went down the ladder of the bunk-bed and scooped a book at random from the old stack of non-Braille books we had yet to get around to getting rid of in some way or another.

I sat on Bell's empty bunk—she was out on some mission, back in action—and opened it to a random page. Ink printed on a page naturally causes a tiny depression in the paper. It's so small that it's almost imperceptible to a finger—you can feel it there as a change in height, but not closely enough to discern any meaning. But I had something better than a finger to scan with.

I formed a tiny droplet of water, spread it thin into a rectangle so light in the air that it could scarcely be seen, and I laid it down on the open page over a spot where I figured there was text. It turned out that seeing text and feeling text were different skills—it takes one longer to recognize an 'a' when it's something they have to trace than it does when it's simply something they can recognize. So I laid that phantom square down on the page, and I searched for the depressions in the paper.

And there they were— A 'C', an 'A', an 'L'—no, two 'L's…

"Call…" I began to shake. Last I'd checked, Yoru was still on the other side of the room—and in my haste I shot a loose ball of droplets at him too fast, too hard—it found him and splattered over his face densely enough to get him a little wet; I felt him frown and wipe some of the water off his nose. But he turned to me all the same.

"Yoru!" I called, holding the book steady. It took all my effort to do so. He got up, put down whatever he was doing and walked over.

"What's up?"

"Look!" I put my finger on the words, and I shifted that rectangle—which I had to remake, since in my haste I'd let it sink into the page—over to the next few letters. And I read to him—excruciatingly slowly but reading all the same—" Call—me… a dancer… be—because—the… dancer… wants…!" 0 0 0 But I would never have colors again, and that was the hardest loss to bear. I missed colors.

I had a better understanding than ever of shape and form—of the way things moved, of the contours of muscles and the clenching of teeth. I could've been an amazing sculptor if that was something I had any interest in doing—but what I had lost far outweighed what I gained in that respect.

The sharp blue glee in Ava's eyes when she cackled; the glitter-flash from Cygnus's newest sword; the sky at dawn breaking over the low and folded buildings in the town; all the things I wore and the food I ate and the cars gliding by on the highway behind the factory. It was gone. Non-recoverable. Lost to memory and rapidly fading. For each color I held onto a single sample. Ava's eyes for blue. The grass outside the factory for green.

The dawns for red, the overcast winter sky for white, Yoru's favorite Christmas sweater for yellow… For each color a single representative among my entire life. I clutched them to my chest like the most vital pearls. Like they were as pivotal to my being as my own beating heart. I swore on every God I knew that I would melt into dust long before I forgot them. 0 0 0 Christmas day.

We were all off work—even Bell, who traditionally found something or other to do on Christmas day to avoid spending too much time with everyone. I decided I deserved a day off (even though I hadn't worked a formal day since October) and resolved to spend every hour walking around in my pajamas with the stuffed frog on my shoulder. Who was going to stop me? Nobody. Cygnus had essentially the same plans.

He—sheepishly—told me about how he had to swap out the gift he'd gotten for me before, because it didn't make any sense anymore. He made a point of dodging my questions about what it was.

"It's not worth it," he said.

"There's no point in telling you if I don't have it." Prodding wasn't worth it, either.

"Fair."

"It's what I get for doing someones' shopping in June," he said.

"I think I was out getting it when Bell came back in the ambulance." The memory replayed in my head; and despite all the panic I felt in the moment, thinking about it now, in that context, made it almost a fond one. A moment where we all bonded, even though it was explicitly not that.

"Yeah," I said.

"So—last month, I got something else," he said. He held out a small gift-wrapped box; a cube of maybe eight inches per side.

"Go ahead." I took it from him; it was heavier than I thought it was going to be. So I plucked the bow off the top and set about unwrapping it. Cygnus was by far the best gift-wrapper at the Radiant—probably because he was the only person who always got something for everyone. I wanted to get something for him. I resolved it—as soon as I was able, I'd get him something. It was the least I could do for who he'd been to me.

I ripped away the wrapping and opened the box inside—and in there was an object it took me a moment to identify—I had to pull it out and hold it in my hand for a moment before I realized what it was. A cool metal statue of a frog. Cygnus spoke: "I was thinking about that time Loybol got Prochazka a gift, and—well, I know we all thought it was really funny at the time, but I personally thought that gift was really touching. And, well, I realized that I was somewhat capable of doing that, too.

I'm no artist, it's not perfect, but—well, I hope you like it as much as I liked that hawk." I did. Tears welled up in my eyes. I made no effort to wick them away. In me, somewhere, a boundary broke—the force of it came through so fast that I was completely powerless to stop it. I stepped forward, closer to Cygnus, and I reached out and I hugged him. After a moment's hesitation, he hugged me back. We stood there embracing for an amount of time I can't quantify. It was a just second; it was forever.

He said: "It's good to have you back, Erika." 0 0 0 Christmas came and went, and the dead of winter arrived. That first snowfall, I went outside. It was late some early January evening, according to Yoru, and the air was bitter and cold. But I took a step outside and the world was alive. Each snowflake shimmered like stars in my awareness, a universe of glittering silver, their forms landing on all places, and in that moment I existed in everything for a mile around simultaneously.

I was in every muted lamppost, every skeletal bush, every person hurrying home in damp hats and gloves. Every window dusted over. Every car creeping down the highway. I was everything and everyone. And for an hour or more I just stood in the snowfall, only a few steps outside the doorway, and I felt the universe go by. And I knew. For whatever came, I would be ready. I could rise stronger than ever before from this. Not immediately, but in time—and I had time; I still had time. There was time.

I knew— My voice will move mountains. My power will shatter the world.