A/N: Wow. This took me forever. I am ashamed. Especially since it was sitting, mostly written, saved on my computer literally all summer. I am sorry. If anyone is still reading this and they haven't given up on me, well, then, mad props to you.
The titles of books mentioned in this chapter aren't of my invention. They're real, and they're among my favorites. If you haven't read them yet, fix that.
Any quote that is entirely bold is spoken in Na'vi. Single Na'vi words are italicized with a glossary at the end of the chapter. Kind of made up the word for story-teller; just go with it.
THIMBLES! And on with the fic…
Saran VD
Wishing the Unkown
Chapter 7
"Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger." ~Ben Okri
The next day is uneventful, almost boring, but my third day ends up a little more exciting.
As soon as we're linked to our avatars, Dr. Espinosa tells me that we need to go to the old school house to pick up more supplies. "We use it for storage now," he says to me as he sets off into the jungle with hardly one glance back to make sure I'm following.
I walk briskly behind him, pushing the branches out of my face. I've heard of the school from Father. He told me that it closed because the Na'vi simply stopped showing up. "They have no interest in learning about us," he had said angrily. "They only want to fight with us." Somehow, I know that I haven't heard the full story of the school, and I look forward to seeing the place for myself.
It's nothing like I expected: a small wooden shack, overrun by vines that crawl up the walls. Dr. Espinosa leads me into the schoolhouse. I look up at the ceiling and see stingbats. Upon becoming aware of our presence, the strange purple creatures chatter amongst themselves and spread their wings, as if trying to appear threatening. I smile slightly and turn my attention to the walls of the schoolhouse. That's when I notice the bookshelf that stands on one wall. I'm drawn towards it, as if it has some sort of magnetic pull. I walk over to it, investigating its contents. Nothing of great length, but they're all books. Made with real paper, with real pages. Such a thing is rare on Earth; we use tablets that contain an entire library on a tiny memory chip. I've never seen a real book in my entire life. Hypnotized, I reach up and grab one of them off of the shelf. The Lorax. Before I have the chance to read it, Dr. Espinosa has gathered the supplies he needs. I look at him, disappointment plain on my face. He chuckles. "Bring it with, then. Just be careful. And put it in my pack when you're done."
I nod and hug the book close to my chest as we leave the schoolhouse.
Dr. Espinosa and I arrive at our usual spot. I leave him quicker than usual today and head to the clearing I found a day previously. I've made it a habit of climbing the tree I found the first day; it makes a comfortable perch while I wait for the day to end. I hoist myself into its branches and open the book carefully. The story is written as a poem, in a lyrical way that begs to be read aloud. So I begin to read it to myself, saying the words under my breath, smiling at the rhymes and made up words.
When I'm about halfway through the story, I hear a rustle in the branches above me. I look up to see a pair of children on a limb above my own- the same pair from two days ago. They're leaning over, staring at the book, and the girl is translating the words into Na'vi for her brother. As soon as they notice that I've stopped reading, they scowl as if I was something distasteful. Smiling to myself, I close the book. "Sorry to disturb you," I say to them. "I'll find a different tree."
They look at each other, eyes wide. "You don't have to, I guess," says the girl grudgingly.
"Finish the story!" whines the boy.
I chuckle and open the book once again and continue from where I left off, reading louder this time. "' I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.
I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.
And I´m asking you, sir, at the top of my lungs'-
he was very upset as he shouted and puffed-
'What´s that THING you´ve made out of my Truffula tuft?'"
As I read, the girl translates, and I make sure to hold the book so that they can see the pictures. When the story is finished, I close the book and look up at them.
The boy smiles softly. "Irayo," he says to me.
The girl, however, looks as angry as she did the other day. Somehow, though, I know the anger isn't entirely directed at me this time. "We should never have come here," she says to her brother. "Now she can hurt us the way all the Skypeople seem to do. They get close to you and shoot when your back is turned." There's real pain in her eyes as she says this.
"But I like her! She tells good stories!" he whines.
"She still can't be trusted. She's one of them." She crouches on the branch. "Come on, Atuki. Let's go."
He shakes his head. "No." He swings himself down to sit next to me on my branch. "Tell it again." His young voice is commanding, and I smile at the adorable attempt at authority.
"But it's in English," I point out.
"Tell!"
Obediently, I open the book and start at the beginning. "What was the Lorax? And why was it there?"
As I read the story, the girl sighs and grumbles under her breath. Atuki, however, is listening intently as I read. I doubt that he understands a word, but he looks at the pictures and seems to enjoy the rhythm of the prose. By the time I've finished, he's snuggled up against my arm and leaning over to better see the pages.
"Okay, Atuki," says his sister. "You've heard it again. Time to go."
"No."
"Atuki…"
"No, Alyara! No!" He shoves himself closer to me. "More story."
I look at his plaintive face, then up at Alyara, who looks about ready to murder me if that's what it takes to get her brother away from me.
"Not now," I tell him softly. "But I'll be here tomorrow."
He pouts for a minute until he realizes what I've said. "Okay," he says, his face brightening. "Tomorrow."
Alyara reaches her hand towards him, and he takes it. She pulls him back up to her branch, shoots a death glare at me, and leads him through the trees and out of sight.
I watch them go with the smallest of smiles. After a couple minutes, I lower myself from the tree and rejoin Dr. Espinosa. He's too absorbed in his work to notice. I sit around with the book until it's time for us to head in for the night.
At dinner, I sit beside Noa, who has continued to be friendly towards me. I begin to tell her about Alyara and Atuki, but my thoughts are interrupted by Grace's voice, which carries down the table. She's animatedly telling a story, and it takes me a few moments to realize she's talking about the wheelchair-bound avatar driver, Jake. I can't hear the details of what she's saying from where I am, but I hear the word "thanator" used several times. My happiness fades a bit; whatever excitement I felt today with the kids was clearly nothing compared to whatever adventure Jake got into. I frown ever so slightly.
Noa notices my dejection. "Hey," she says softly, sounding genuinely concerned. "Something wrong?"
"No," I reply, because I'm honestly not sure why I'm getting upset. What Jake is doing doesn't matter to me. But I still get a nagging feeling thinking about it. Jealousy? "It's just been a long day." The perfect answer: vague, but it usually satisfies the questioner. Without another word to Noa, I get up from the table and head to bed early.
The next day, I climb my tree, The Lorax clutched in my arms, and wait for Atuki and Alyara to show up. I figure that it's only a matter of time before they arrive.
I'm right; after barely five minutes, I hear Atuki's brassy voice call out, "Vurpengyu!"
It takes me a moment to realize that Atuki is referring to me. Story-teller. I smile and look at the bough above me, where he sits with Alyara. He waves cheerfully at me, and I wave back. He giggles, as if it's the most exciting thing in the world. Alyara rolls her eyes a bit, but she doesn't look nearly as angry as she did the day before. Comparatively speaking, she's positively cheerful.
Atuki snuggles next to his sister on the branch, looking at me expectantly.
I hold up The Lorax. "This is all that I have," I tell him.
Atuki pouts. "But you know other stories, don't you?" he asks sadly.
I bite my lip thoughtfully. I certainly know more stories, but I don't know if I want to tell them. There's no way I could do a book like The Tale of Despereaux justice, and even if I could, there would be a lot of things to explain to the children about human culture. I'm fairly certain that the only reason that The Lorax interested them as much as it did was that it was really timeless. There wasn't much said in it that was Earth-specific. But books that I've read, like The Hunger Games or Harry Potter? Those would take a lot of explanation for Atuki and Alyara to understand them.
I haven't said anything for several minutes, so Alyara says, in a smug little voice, "What, run out of ideas? Some storyteller."
My eyebrows furrow. She's goading me, and I know I shouldn't rise to her challenge, but the words escape before I can stop them. "I have my own stories to tell."
Alyara leans against the trunk of the tree, holding Atuki on her lap. The two children look down at me. Atuki looks positively ecstatic, while his sister looks very pleased with herself.
I fumble frantically, hoping to make something up as I go along. "Once upon a time," I start, "there was a man and a woman. They…" I pause to think. "They desperately wanted to have a baby. They prayed and hoped, and finally, the woman learned that she was carrying a baby in her belly. The man and woman were very happy. They learned that their baby would be a little girl. But one day, a few months before the baby was ready to be born, the woman got into an accident." There are two gasps from the tree above me, and only then do I fully realize what I'm doing. I should stop while I'm ahead. I don't need to pour out my soul to these kids. "The baby was born early, and both the woman and the baby were sick." Well, maybe I do. There's something therapeutic about saying this out loud. I look up and, seeing the worry on the faces of Alyara and Atuki, I add. "They got better, for a little while at least. But they had to be very careful, because they got sick very easily. They lived on Earth, and the air is dangerous for people to breathe because it is very dirty. The woman and the girl wore special masks that gave them clean air, and the air in their house was safe. But one day, four years after the girl was born, the-" I pause, inhaling deeply. Atuki and Alyara don't need to know that my mother basically killed herself. I decide to lie a little. "The window to their house broke, letting the poisonous Earth air in."
Atuki gasps. "Then what? They didn't die, did they?" He sounds genuinely scared.
Alyara hugs him close to her, looking down at me. There's something in her expression that I haven't seen on her face before. Pity? I can't be sure. "Finish the story," she orders me softly.
I nod. "The little girl got her special mask on before she got sick from the air, but the woman wasn't so lucky. She got sick again, and she died." My voice breaks at the end of the sentence, and once again I wonder if I should stop.
"No!" says Atuki sadly. "The little girl needs her sa'nu! What happened to the girl?"
"Yeah," Alyara agrees, speaking very softly. "And does she have a name?"
I nod. "Mandi. The girl's name was Mandi." I don't bother to make up a name; if I'm going to bare my soul to them, I might as well go all the way with it. "Mandi grew up, but she still got sick very easily. For her seventeenth birthday, she was given the chance to go to Pandora. Mandi had always wanted to go there, so she accepted. She had to train for more than a year, but she did eventually make it to Pandora, where she had many adventures. But that's a tale for another time." I look up at them. Atuki looks so forlorn that I want to scoop him up in my arms and hug him, but Alyara's expression is trickier.
"Thank you for the story," Atuki says sadly. "I hope that Mandi is happy now."
I smile at him. "She is," I assure him.
Before anyone else has the chance to speak, I hear Dr. Espinosa call for me. "Mandi! Come over here! I need your help!"
Alyara's eyes pop wide open, and she whispers my name under her breath.
"I'll see you two tomorrow," I assure them, and I swing out of the tree and onto the ground. "Coming!" I call to Dr. Espinosa, and I run over to him.
Dr. Espinosa leads me back to base camp, his work done for the day, and I find myself meditating on Alyara's facial expression, for it seems to be imprinted in my brain. She'd put it all together; I know she had. So what is she going to say to me tomorrow? The thought nags at me even as I lie down in my cot and end the link.
Back in my human body, it's hard to hide the fact that my mind is stuck in another world. Noa, in particular, seems almost offended when it takes me at least ten seconds to register that she's speaking to me over dinner. Once again, I tell her, "It's been a long day," and excuse myself from the table.
It's hard for me to sleep. I do eventually manage to shut my eyes, but my dreams are plagued with visions of crashing vehicles and hospital rooms and an emaciated woman with brown eyes and red hair sitting in a wheelchair as she throws a vase through a window.
I wake up early, shivering. I manage to get dressed, but I'm still cold, so I wrap myself in a blanket and head down for breakfast. When I get to the cafeteria, I consider going back to bed for a moment because I am in no shape to handle the situation that is before me.
Only one person sits at a table in the cafeteria: Dr. Grace Augustine. I stand just outside the doorway, staring at her as she reads some notes or something. There is no way that I can deal with this; I don't want her to see me after five hours of sleep with red eyes and a blanket wrapped around me like I'm some sort of child. I impressed her my first day. No way am I going to impress her now. As quietly as I can, I get some food and sit at the end of her table, far away from her eyes that I'm sure are just waiting to judge what I'm doing wrong. Dr. Augustine glances at me once, in a strange sidelong way, and almost smiles. Am I endearing or cute or amusing or am I just humiliating myself by sitting here and staring at my knees and not saying a word to her? It's all so confusing and I have no idea what to do and I am about to open my mouth and say something just to have some course of action to take when Noa enters and saves me from certain mortification.
"Good morning," she says to me as she sits down with her tray of food. Several others enter as she sits down, and the usual low hum of voices finally starts up. Noa's eyes are fixed on my face, and I know that she's hoping for a better explanation of my attitude yesterday.
I suppose I owe her that much. "I think I'm in over my head," I tell her.
Noa smiles a bit. "I doubt that," she assures me. "According to Luis, you have been doing well, especially considering your lack of training."
I sigh. "Yes, but, I'm supposed to be translator for him, but I have no idea how to act around the Na'vi. Not even Alyara and Atuki."
Her smile turns into a puzzled frown. "Who?"
"The kids. I started telling you about them yesterday."
"Oh, right. What do you mean, you have no idea how to act around them? They're no different than human kids, are they?"
The words burst out of my mouth before I have time to think. "I've never been around human kids!"
Noa blinks at me several times. "Never? Not even kids your own age?"
I'm slightly irked by the fact that she just called me a kid, but I ignore my annoyance. "Father and Dr. Hayes were worried I'd get too sick. That they'd get me sick. And I don't have any brothers or sisters."
She stares at me thoughtfully for a few seconds. "Then, I guess, just be sensitive. Kids are upset more easily than adults. Don't tell them anything overly emotional."
Alyara's surprised expression pops into my head again, and I think to myself, Well, it's too late for that one. For a fleeting instant, I fear that I've scared her and her brother away for good.
When I finally link up with my avatar and head to Dr. Espinosa's spot, I don't stop walking until I've reached my tree. I swing myself onto my usual branch and look up. I sigh in relief as I see Alyara sitting a couple branches ahead of me. Sure, her brother's not there, but at least I haven't scared her off.
She stares at me with those intense golden eyes of hers, as if unsure of whether or not to speak. I stare back, smiling slightly at her, trying to seem warm and inviting. I didn't mean to scare you and your brother off, I want to tell her, but I can't get the courage.
The girl lowers herself down the boughs of the tree until she's seated beside me. She folds her hands in her lap, and suddenly they are the most interesting thing in the world to her. Ever so softly, she asks me, "Vurpengyu, may I tell you a story?"
Letting out a sigh of relief, I whisper, "Of course."
Alyara takes a deep breath. "Once upon a time," she begins, "there were three siblings. One, the oldest, was brave. The second, the sister, was clever, and she wanted to be just like her big brother. The third, the baby, loved his older siblings more than anything in the world, except for their parents.
"The oldest and the sister went to school, where they learned about humans. How to talk like humans, what humans acted like… The sister loved the school. She loved learning things and getting smarter. But the oldest brother was different. School made him angry, and one day, he and his friends stopped coming. They didn't go back to school for a long time. When they did come back, it wasn't the same. The sister saw them all arrive through the school's window. They were wearing war paint on their faces, and they were screaming that they'd destroyed the tree-killing human monsters. The sister stood up and ran to the window just in time to see humans use their fire shooters to blow holes in her brother. He was dead before he hit the ground." Alyara is still staring at her hands, but there are tears in her eyes. "The sister ran away from the school as fast as she could, but not before she saw that all of her brother's friends had been killed and that her teacher had been shot. When the sister got home from school, she had to tell her mother and father that the oldest brother was dead. She never went back to school again. She never got anywhere near humans again." The tears are still there, streaming down her cheeks, but there's a new hardness in her voice.
I hesitate for an instant before placing my hand on hers. "I'm… I'm sorry."
Alyara looks me in the eye, and I can see years of pain in her expression. "So why am I here with you now?" she asks me in her thickly accented English.
I shrug, and answer her, "Your guess is as good as mine." I give her hand a squeeze.
Her focus goes back to her hands. "You humans cause nothing but trouble. But you are here and you are not causing trouble. My brother cannot wait to talk to you again. He wants to hear another story about Mandi." She glances at me out of the corner of her eye. "He has not figured out that the story is about you, that it is real. What are you going to tell him?"
I shrug. "I'll think of something. I am a vurpengyu."
Alyara scoots a little bit closer to me. "Is it all true? About your mother and your father and you being sick? About wanting to come here?" I nod, and she asks me, "Why?"
"Sorry?"
"Why do you want to come here? It is dangerous and The People do not like humans very much and all that is happening is that trees and plants and animals are dying so the humans can dig really deep holes in the ground."
I laugh softly. "If you think this is bad, you wouldn't last one second on Earth."
"The human planet? Why not?"
So I tell her. I tell her how there are too many people in too little space, how the air is toxic for even healthy people to breathe so air purifying masks have turned into some sort of fashion statement. I tell her about the smog that obscures the skies, the flavorless algae that is our main food source, the lack of greenery or wild animals or anything that makes Pandora so special. I find myself pointing out the simple beauties that abound on Pandora but are impossible to find on Earth, like flies buzzing around our heads or the sound of wind blowing through the leaves. Even the tree we're sitting on would never be found outside of a special, controlled environment on Earth. Alyara is an attentive listener, and I'm sorry that I have to end when Dr. Espinosa calls my name.
"Will I see you tomorrow?" I ask Alyara as I rise from the tree branch and head toward the ground.
"Yes. Good-night, Vurpengyu Mandi."
I smile at Alyara and find myself blowing her a kiss. "Until we meet again, Miss Alyara." I descend from the tree, and the branches hide her face from my view. As I head in for the night, I can't help but wonder if Noa was right. Maybe I'm not in over my head, after all.
Irayo- Thank you
Vurpengyu- Storyteller (This is the one I made up using a method that actually made sense to me but is too complicated to explain.)
