What I Know – Emily Abele
"It's…those are…" I was lost for words but those I could think of were too simple for such a simple thing; he grinned at me and it made my tongue heavier just to look into those blue eyes, hazy with his ever widening smile. "Sir, those are boxes."
Sir, he was always Sir to me, never what he asked to be called: if he wouldn't give me a proper name to call him by then it would be Sir forever. He hated it.
"Yes, they are," he lifted one and tossed it to me: my small hands scrambled not to drop it, fingers catching in the delicate white ribbon that seemed to froth from where it crossed on the box. He laughed as I grasped at air; the box dropped with a heavy clang to the glass and grating floor. My head snapped up to look at him, shamed and guilty at my inability to coordinate my hands (and often feet). His smile quirked to the side. "Well, you've undone the ribbon now, might as well open it."
My eyes were still on him as I knelt down, settling my knees on the grating and setting my fingers on the box: I thumbed the underside before flicking it open.
"Emily…" It breathed my name like a sigh: I did not expect it to talk when I opened it, my first reaction was to yelp and the second to scramble away from it; I backed into him, pressing my back to his shins and knees, grasping tightly.
"What was that? Boxes- boxes can't talk!" I tipped my head back until I could see him, looking up at Sir to see his infuriating smile: how could he be so calm?
"You like an adventure, right?" He was grinning like a fool and I could not stand it for another damn second; I was going to wipe that smug look from his face right now: I shoved my shoulders into his legs and instantly the smile was replaced with slight shock, the kind that comes from suddenly falling backwards. The words that chimed musically around the room could only be curses in his own language, another thing he refused to teach me, as he tumbled onto the floor with me before regaining the thought to untangle his long legs from my vengeful embrace; he sat up quickly. "You-"
My glare cut into his speech on proper manners and whatever; if you wanted to get something through his thick skull it needed to be done with force…and a bit of shaking. I gripped his shoulders "Sir: you will explain this now. No more answering questions with other questions, you and me will talk like straight lines."
He pouted. "But you said you liked riddles-"
I gave him a shake, less than gently, and forced him to make eye contact. "Riddles are riddles. Questions are questions," I loosened my grip and sat back on my heels, frustrated that I even had to make the distinction: he had spent way too much time alone before I came. "Now, sir, answer: what was that?"
"You don't have to shake me," he frowned.
"Sir."
"Psychic gift-box, invented in the twenty-third century. They were like those cards, you know, your time has them; you record your voice. Only," he shrugged dismissively. "This is a box."
I rolled my eyes. "They combined the gift holder with the gift tag." My summary earned me an overly animated nod: I stared at him for a minute, searching his face before reaching back and picking up the box; there was something scrawled on the bottom: I devoured it before letting my eyes rest back on him, making an exasperated face and sighing though my nose, long and slow to let him see, clearly, that I was frustrated with him.
He ruffled his hair and rolled his eyes to the ceiling, the guilty smile on his face completing the look: it was his hand writing, so distinct, that was on the bottom because it had been his voice as well. Come on then, Emsilly: the hunt begins. Find the other boxes to finish my thought.
"What the hell." It was not a question but he must have still thought we were playing that game because he looked excited and ready with an answer. "Just tell me, stupid. I'm right here."
"You always said you wanted to be on a real treasure hunt."
This was too much, I was done with these stupid games: I threw the box at his face and stormed off to wherever the winding halls would take me, somewhere he could not follow…at least for a while. I could not help shouting for all the universe to hear: "I wish Aaron had never gone back to university!"
The walls were reflective enough for me to see that he was still on the floor, looking wounded.
"I didn't know."
I could just hear his whispered words as they echoed through the air and I did not know who I had just hurt more. There was that line, I had crossed it again. He had let the first few times slide but we were getting to a point where I knew he would leave me, like he had left all the others. "Sorry, sir."
It was whispered to the air, he was too far away to hear and it would not have changed a thing.
"You humans call it 'Gliese 581d' but most everyone else knows it as Saorian," he called from the console; I had the doors open and was staring with unmasked wonder at the planet, drinking in the sight of swirling moons and the vibrating surface that he promised was teeming with humanoid life. He continued with the facts; apparently none of his other companions had cared about all this and he was happy to babble all he liked with me. "It has, as I said before, humanoid life. Also, there are a number of advanced medicinal technologies- you remember the beginnings of nano-surgery on your planet, yes? Well, they have mastered it! Wonderful really, no scars. Maybe they can fix your knee."
Apparently he was distracted: I gave a startled cry as a moon spun just outside the doors, the bottom of the ship scrapping and grinding for a moment before he pulled up.
"Oops, and it has fifty-three moons! They amass to about your Earth moon and that makes gravity about equal, we might be a bit light on our feet down there."
We needed this break, we really did: our last argument about did us in (I threatened to leave him and go back to university with Aaron) all because there had been a box on the counter of the bathroom…that was not there when I got into the shower; our deal was that he would not enter the room while I was showering and I would do the same for him. Unless, of course, the ship was breaking down. That happened once or twice before and those were automatically forgiven; emergency trumped teasing in my book and I would gladly hold wires together wearing only a towel if it meant I would live instead of getting pulled into a hostile sun or something else unpleasant.
"It's tidally locked so one side of the planet is day and the other night-"
"All the time?" I tore my eyes away from space to look back at him: he quirked an eyebrow at my incredulous look and determined that it was a question I wanted an answer to: he was getting good at this.
"All the time! I'm serious; we can see both night and day and that murky bit, that bit between them you're so particularly fond of, what do humans call it?"
I laughed at him as he kept dancing around, yanking levers and pushing buttons. "Either dawn or dusk, maybe twilight. Going into night on this planet, I suppose, would be dusk and into day would be dawn."
There really was no day and night on our ship, our ship?, there were light switches and command boards and that is how I slept, dimming the lights. I assumed he slept but I never saw it, not once did he ever look tired. I had woken up one morning to find a box near my hand- that had not caused an argument because I was too damn tired to comprehend that waking up with a box that was not there before meant that he had come into my room while I was sleeping. I tried to forget about boxes.
"Can we walk from one to the other? Please?" I smiled at him, hoping to sway him to my side.
"Of course we can! What kind of question is that?" He hopped to my side as the ship began its decent, standing slightly behind me, touching shoulder to shoulder. "You wanted something amazing; I'll give you something amazing."
He pressed a box into my hands and I sighed: some part of me knew that he was distracting me with the sights so I would not be so mad about the box he had just given me- and had presumably hidden on this planet. I was angry with him for being right about distracting me so easily: I tangled my fingers in the ribbon and yanked, hard, before nonchalantly flipping the top.
"So close now," It breathed and I twisted my mouth into a displeased smile, laughing through my nose.
"That's not creepy at all," I sighed and looked up at him, eyes pleading. "We can't just be done with this?"
He shook his head and pulled me out onto the surface of the planet; we practically bounced across the ground towards what I could only call a pile of buildings. Because that is exactly what it was: a pile almost like a nest. There was blaring music coming from the center of the pile and from the door near me. I tipped my head a bit to look into a building: an avian face popped back out and it chirped in excitement; I gasped as swarms of lightly feathered humanoids collected around us, all chatting excitedly, pulling us into the heart of the crowd and the music.
For hours we explored the city, talking to the people (they knew a little English and were quite fond of visitors) and generally enjoying ourselves. We must have landed in the middle of a really exciting festival: by the time we had crossed from one side of the city to the other I found myself adorned with beads and ribbons and feathers, like a tribal queen…or like it was Mardi Gras, Aaron and I had done that once. Despite my light smile I felt heavy and my heart stuttered; I did miss him, maybe enough to go back but-Sir was about the same but he had less feathers than I did; I thought about trying to fly away like Icarus, but we had migrated from day to the very edge of night. In the dimness of the world, I saw a the glitter of gold.
On the lip of a fountain there was a small box; I glanced to Sir, who was dancing in the streets with one of the humanoid creatures, and he flashed me a tired smile. I quickly snatched it up and held it to my ear.
"We can always go back."
I frowned, box still pressed to the side of my head: blinking, I read the bottom of the box (it was plain cardboard on the inside) and nearly cried. Sir knew how much I missed Aaron, how much I wanted to see him again. I tucked the box under my arm and danced over to him, joining in the festivities and twirling myself into all sorts of shapes; he danced near me and I was happy that we could go back, if just for a few minutes, a few days.
I was going to see Aaron again.
And part of me was dreading it, heavy with something I did not know: it got heaver when I looked over to Sir and saw his reassuring gaze.
The key still fit in the lock, of course it did, it was my dorm room after all; maybe, I had hoped, that Aaron had changed the locks to prevent me from coming back…with him. Before I twisted the key, before I even touched the knob, I knocked three times, two long and one short: it was our knock, the one we had debated over for so long. Sometimes he would mess it up and I would open the door with a laugh. This time, he was the one who opened the door with a laugh.
"You remembered."
"I've only been gone a day, apparently. Did you-"
"Don't use strep throat again for a while, okay?"
"Aaron!" I laughed and stumbled into his arms, a friendly hug; we had done this once or twice before when he came home a bit drunk.
Home. I froze in his arms and he gave me a small smile as he loosened his grip. Was this really home, this three years? Aaron had been a mistake the first year, a point of contention (who calls in their room deposit anyway?), since he was in the girls' dorm: the nice, elderly woman at reception had marked him for an 'Erin'. That had stuck him with me, or me with him. We had become friends, maybe more than friends. I never wanted to stick to one thing or one person but he had been content to sit and wait for me.
He was young and as beautiful as his eyes, his smile, his voice but-
"I came back for a reason, Aaron and…I'm not sure if you'll like it."
He squeezed my shoulder gently.
"I'm in love with someone, something else…that's- that's all that I know for sure." I looked up at Aaron, expecting an angered response. "It's the idea of being alive. I can't sit still and I can't wait for things to come to me, I just can't."
That same smile used to make me weak at the knees now only made me immensely sad. "I think I already knew. I don't mind, I'll still be here, if you ever need a place to stay…or you decide to finish school. I can't stop you from leaving either." That speech seemed to take a lot out of him but he still had that perfect smile on his face, that same warm face I had associated with late-night Wegmans runs for popsicles and all those horror movie marathons; he was my college friend, the first person I ever met in my hall, and he defined three years of my life. But I was never one to sit still for three long years, not even for someone else.
"Day one?"
"Day one, you were all ready to get out, transfer, graduate, anything. Nothing was keeping you from just up and leaving one day," he gave me a sad smile. "Year three: you finally found someone who could give you everything you ever wanted."
When he came back, I was sitting outside the ship, on a battered suitcase that had traveled the world: I had told him about that suitcase and all its bizarre adventures, including the fiasco in Spain. He knew there was not much to put in it and it made him sad that my world amounted to what could fit into a suitcase.
"I filed a leave of absence." I did not look up.
"I didn't think you would come back," he admitted, kneeling beside me to look into my face. "Thought you were staying with Aaron to finish school, know how much you liked school- oh, Silly." He saw my forming tears and pulled me into a tight hug. "Whenever you want to come back we can, promise, I promise."
My eyes burned with the tears that I refused to let spill: this was my choice and he was not going to change this one bit.
"It's on the Kuiper Belt, this planet 2003 UB313, right?"
"Very good, you read that book. Yes, but it has a name, you humans just haven't gotten to it yet. It had a sudden evolutionary jump so everything is a bit…hostile."
"Not like I'm unused to running, Sir." I pointed out with sarcastic politeness, tipping back in the captain's chair: I had quickly commandeered it for my own once I realized it was the perfect place to read. The ship did not even mind if I put my feet up, so long as I asked first.
"Had to say it, my dear."
The ship landed with a solid 'thunk' and he threw open the doors and pulled me outside, dragging me into the red haze: everything was red and dry and dead, that evolutionary jump must have killed everything because there was nothing to look at, save a few steep, ridiculously steep, rock formations.
"Sir, this is all-"
A shot fired through the air and nearly missed me; I knew what the wrong end of a bullet felt like and it just flew by my thigh, this one. I jerked away and pulled hard on Sir's jacket, scrambling to make it back to the ship before one (or both) of us ended up with metal in our bodies; it was impossible for me to run backwards while pulling him so I turned, threading my fingers around his numerous button holes and yanking with every step. I should not have turned away.
He was yanked away from me and I fell back as my hand almost went with him: falling to the hard, red earth I felt my head hit first but I was not giving in, not yet. Unsteady and unbalanced I heaved myself up to look into the face of a less than humanoid creature; it made a throaty growl and aimed its weapon at me: it was not a gun, it was a blow gun. The thing puffed its chest like a bullfrog and I knew how the dart had traveled as fast as it had (the singer in me envied breath support like that) and it put its toady lips to the hollow tube. I made sure my eyes never left where I supposed its eyes would be.
A bellowing made the creature turn and I could see around its legs, see Sir being dragged away, going limp but still struggling; I made to crawl forward but the creature before me grunted in disapproval, obviously thinking what to do. Another bellow seemed to cement its decision.
"Sir!" I gasped, trying to prolong my life for a few seconds.
"Find the box!" He called to me, thrashing madly. "The box!"
It was a mantra until the toad before me released its breath, sending a well-aimed dart into his chest: I screamed and scrambled to get up, failing. Sir went quiet but his eyes were still open, still looking at me. Toad seemed to realize this because it looked at me as well, really looked hard, before slamming the butt of the blow gun into my temple.
For some reason, I thought I would be in a different place when I came to, maybe strapped to a lab table or dead. How I would wake up dead was beyond my thought process right now, however: all I could manage was 'find shiny box'.
I needed to find that box- oh! Up on probably the tallest, sheerest rock structure I had ever seen was a glint of gold. Hauling myself to my feet, and still unsteady, I began to put one dragging foot in front of the other.
"I hate boxes. Not ever again. No more."
Emily, just hold on for a bit longer; you're so close now. One foot in front of the other, step by step, you can make it. All those damn boxes, all those miniature treasure hunts: it was not a riddle, it was a message. And I hated it so much right now, hated him, because it was something he had spread out over so long that I had begun to think it was all just a game.
This was no game: games were fun and this sucked beyond anything else I had ever had to do. Gym class was better than this, by far.
Breathing was beginning to hurt; this atmosphere was strange and alien. Just hold on for a bit longer. I had reached the rocks. You can make it. I gripped a sharp rock and jumped, scrambling for a foothold. You're so close now.
So close now.
Close now.
He was gone, taken and I needed him for once. Or he needed me. We needed each other, needed each other like fire needs oxygen and kindling: for each gasping attempt to climb higher he was there to fuel my hunger and fill my mind with all the knowledge I could ever want.
"You knew this would happen, you knew," I said through my tears as I scrambled up the rocks, frantically trying to reach the top because I had to, I knew if I made it I would be fine: there was something pulling my mind up and over each rock, the glimmer of gold made me desperate to know what he was trying to tell me, desperate to know what I had been forcing myself to forget or disregard. My palms were getting scrapped and so were my knees, my shins, my arms, my everything was hurt and there were some bleeding gouges left from where I had almost slid back down. It was steep but I was not going to lose.
There was something boxed at the top and I needed my answer.
The last ledge was behind me now and I collapsed, gasping, on the warm rock: it was gusty up here, the rocks were flat like a plateau at their summit and there was nothing to block the breezes that rushed forth to grab my hair and clothes; pushing myself up was painful and dangerous, I hurt all over and the wind threatened to topple me, but I managed to reach for the golden box with the froth of ribbon.
White quickly became pink and pink quickly became crimson red, the blood smeared across the golden surface as well; my fingers were beyond such delicate tasks as untying a bow and my teeth quickly set on the task of ripping and tearing. The ribbon was loose and the wind took it in a hurry, sending it careening over the edge of the rocks; maybe someone would find it or maybe it would decay into nothing, it did not matter anymore, not a whit.
I held the box to my ear so that the wind could not snatch away the precious words that I needed to hear, that I needed to live, that I needed to be sure he was still alive somewhere out there.
"Stay. Stay with me."
They shocked me, the way they were said with such clarity and feeling, a feeling he would never let anyone see: I used to think he was like bottled dry ice, that he would explode eventually, but he never did, at least not at me or where I could see him break. "Stay. Stay with me."
This time I was careful to hold the lid, not wanting the wind to take that away: I had to read the bottom. The wind was making my eyes water but I blinked it away; maybe it was not the wind, maybe it was me being human but I would forever blame the wind.
Stay. Stay with me. Forever, until the end of time, because I can arrange that and you know it. I want you to stay, I need you to stay, I'm begging you to stay. When Aaron left I thought I'd lost you too but you stayed, why did you stay? I know I drive you mad and you let me know it but you… I can give you the all universe, all the knowledge, the adventure, and more, so stay.
Please stay. Please.
There was a name under it, a name, his name and I instantly decided, then an there, what I was going to do: I stood up straighter, battling the wind for the right to stand tall and proud, stealing air as I filled my lungs.
"Theta, I'm staying! You'll never be able to get rid of me now!" I crowed it from the mountain top, head thrown back in triumph: my words carried with the power of a singer across the breezes because this was something the whole hostile world needed to hear and gods be damned if Theta himself did not hear those words echo in his daft ears.
A light shown down and I looked directly into its beams: it was the thing that had taken Theta away, captured him; their craft landed and hummed before me, I still gripped the box like a lifeline and they seemed wary of me as they dragged him out onto the rock, clever hands bound behind him.
The creature was speaking to me, I realized quickly, in a language I did not recognize: I looked to Theta to translate. "I told them that you would stay, that you would find me. They said you would not, humans do not, and I bet them that you would be different, I knew you would stay- more hoped really-"
They shoved him forward and I took a step closer, daring anyone to stop me. "How did you know-"
"Aaron told me this would happen, when he had that thing and his mind was all 'woo' and all over creation, literally; he saw this and told me."
"But I couldn't know."
Theta shook his head, biting his lip. "If you did, Aaron told me, if you did we would both die, you sooner than me. So I had to pretend…" he hesitated and I took one more step closer. "Pretend to not know you would save us both; brilliantly, I might add."
All the creatures were leaving and shortly it was me and Theta, standing at the highest point of a barren wasteland: I could not have been happier. I forgot my hands and attacked the ropes, untying him quickly so I could throw my arms around him for a hug; I did not plan on letting go ever. He squirmed away after a second and instead took my hand, facing us toward the horizon.
We stood like that for a few minutes until I gave his hand a quick squeeze, the pressure igniting a fire in my own hand; he returned the pulse and I made a choking noise, my hand hurt so badly.
"Well, tell me then!" He gasped, digging around his numerous pockets for something- a packet of sickeningly green pills. "Ahhh…" He opened his mouth comically wide and stuck out his tongue; I stared at the packet with distaste and distrust, I did not like pills. "Pain killers, Silly. Open."
I grimaced and obeyed, swallowing when he told me, and watched him call the ship to where we stood: I happily hopped in and promptly collapsed in the captain's chair, sprawled in all directions.
"You know," I said, making faces to dispel the nasty feeling of the tablet coating and to mask the pain in my body, the all over ache, "You could have just told me from the start. That you wanted me to stay."
He closed the doors and pressed his back into them, looking guilty and so heartbreakingly expectant that I had to add more.
"Because, from the first second, I would have chosen this over anything; over everything."
He drew in a shuddering breath and stepped forward to the controls, ready to whisk us somewhere in the blink of an eye. Theta, his name was prefect in my mind, it fit in the place he had made, gave me that grin again; his whole face turned bright and happy and mischievous all at once as he pulled the main lever.
"Like you, I prefer a treasure hunt."
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