Alive in the Wings
Here I am River.
The river Tam. I touch – am touched at shores where imaginary me roughly ends: I exist, on this Firefly. Mu-qian. Ten skinny fingers and ten toes. You see me, I see you. I know of the distinction. All the jigsaw bits splinted together, even the crying hollow that remembers it used to be a piece of my brain - this too is rivertam. All me still. Simon recognises; is not afraid of it. Me and the in-between: wakefulness, love, chaos.
Outside of this metal eggshell, surface doesn't glue; reality dissolves with no buoyant wreckage dispersing, not a single light-blink resonance of meaning. Nothing out there defines you.
Then River-girl is only the Black. A derelict memory of speaking. She is star. She is bubble, totally herself.
She is space.
She is silent.
Look with my eyes, with not my eyes. I have a way with the 'verse. Fingers combing like dragnets. Feeling ripples in flux, in hiding schools, and from them the invisible epicentre can be inferred. Knowing without seeing; it's all particles in the end.
There are ten aboard Serenity, leaving Coeus. Ten beating hearts (not dead): the others, Simon and I – and the Passenger. Nine and one. She does not give her real name. Like the other woman, the captain's wife – been lying for so long, does not know how to stop. She is exhausted with lying, but not brittle. Not weak. Notices dents from bullets past dotting the walls, even the ones Zoe's never found; she does not blink. The Shepherd is nervous around her. Chides himself a litte. Jayne stiffens, seeing woman two-fold with animal blinkers. Jump, it tells him; run, it tells him. Opposing forces cancelling, and he stays – glowers.
She's booked to be dropped at Passena, has a family there. Tells this over main meal, smiling so warmly, even the captain pays her full attention. (Ain't sore on the eyes, that's fer sure.) Her work as a surveyor has been keeping her to the border planets, away for a long while. Too long. She misses them, her daughter especially.
Many lies, but this is not one of them.
Captain, Zoe and Simon soften at her telling – thinking about children.
Think about dirty overalls and blue eyes deepening into brown, burbling baby mouth sweetened by a breast. Think about little sisters who could not be protected, lost and so close. So close to never being saved.
Opaque.
Hard edges.
Sharp frame, stuck to its narrow track: features for structural practicality within vessel of limited space. Little asymmetric hole off-centre at distance from the lower-deck floor equivalent to one-point-two-eight mi. Ratio scale.
Locked: keep out. Locked in.
I touch one finger against it, thinking. Privacy is as privacy does on the ship. The captain never had detector locks, but the Passenger has rigged one up all the same: electromagnetic web interloping on tumblers of centuries-old design. Subtle, can't see or hear it, but try to open the door and she will know.
In my hand: a slender retractor from the infirmary. Simon is in the kitchen with Kaylee and did not see me take it. Not stealing when it belongs to Serenity. Serenity does not take offence. I picture the lock in my mind, the exact heft and position of each lever and pin, the release of the bolt snagging the detector fields. Secrets guarding secrets. I close my eyes. Count to ten.
Door slides open and I take a step inside.
This is not what River is thinking: this is a suitcase; here are her clothes, her gun in its holster (spotless as a surgical instrument), her book with its printed pages filled with Pre-modern Russian words…
There is a purpose; she is not aiming at dust clouds. I am familiar with the procedures.
I am aware that I am looking for something. I forget momentarily that the Tall Card game will be over soon, and that she will be back. Interrupting. From the suitcase: a platinum shimmer winks like a puddle of mirrors, playful as a nebula of butterflies. I pull it out, the strip of fabric, preciously folded. A skin-tight garment delicately sequined with green, and so small, it would only fit a girl-child. Years and years since it was worn.
A surveyor then, for the Independents during the war. But not right up till the end. Otherwise she would not be drifting, alone, carrying this child's costume like this.
Like this. Necessary sweet painful reminder of the girl (brown-haired, like her mother) who disappeared behind stage curtains, then to reappear – fly straight into mother's embrace. Still flying as mother hoisted her up. "Did you see me?" Their faces close, mother said, "Zui mei-li'de little caterpillar I've ever seen." Daughter wiggled her nose against mother's neck in tickling response. Seven or eight years since spy-mommy left her on Passena: girl must be almost fifteen now.
"River, bie wang'le, your dance recital is tomorrow."
I am out, running, in a second. Momentum springing up my ankles and feet; I accelerate. I excel.
"Mei-mei?" Simon catches me. He never catches me: I was always faster, nimbler, eager to be somewhere. Me out in front, he scrambling behind, steadily but always behind. I would not let him win for appearances; he would have still called me a little brat (my little brat of a sister), but in a different sort of voice, hurt-like, if I had. Perhaps I have stopped on my own, gone backwards. Negative instead of positive. Would I confuse something as physically rudimentary as that?
Sharp, sharp things. Dangerous. No running with scissors. Both retractor and shining costume are snatched out of my hands.
"What are you doing with that?"
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Simon didn't catch me. It isn't Simon at all. Mother has a pretty accent. Voice for speaking comforts, tenderness, levity. Cuts me. Tiny needles.
"She's not a bit like Simon. She talks to me, Gabriel, like she knows everything I'm thinking. Her teachers come complaining to me, they don't want her in their classes. This is my daughter… I don't know what to do with her."
"It is River, isn't it? River, how did you get this?"
I make myself frightened, recoil from her. Say nothing. The Passenger is good at hiding her anger. Right now she is furious.
"Dong bu dong? Do you understand what I'm saying?"
Then others come. It is a small ship. In the corridor are two and two. Quadrilateral: highly unstable. Simon, jumping down the stairs from the kitchen, Kaylee following him; he takes my right elbow. I fold my head around him. Kaylee chimes in, half an octave higher: "Is something the matter, Lena?"
"No… No, nothing is the matter." Irrational to make a fuss. Suspicious, even. She is thinking she made a mistake saying anything – the sister clearly isn't right in the head – should have said she left her door ajar. The Passenger is going to let this go.
Do I understand?
I do. Pin-doll with moving parts, all cells and gases; a special brain but no soul that they could measure. Home is where folks take care of one another. Her parents forgot her when she went away.
I understand.
Between mu-qian A and mu-qian B, between this River and the other, the River before the Academy – bridging them – is Simon. The rest she wants to forget. Home is here, not on Osiris. River was born on Serenity, gulped her first breath in Serenity's hull. Dropped wet shaking naked onto her filthy cargo-bay grills; was wrapped the next instant in softest silk and her brother's arms. She is shaking now.
I am shaking.
They are all looking, eyes and lips frozen comically – all staring at me. So I say it again:
"She understands. It was open. Couldn't help it. She understands everything."
Everything.
The engine room is so quiet. Warm like the earth after a long day of sun-soaking. The heart hums and the day is glad. I lay myself down, sink into the mineral warmth. Skirts a pink blossom half-furled. Spreading around me. Over bowing iron-bark: wall ceiling floor continuous. Uneven, gritty when palms and fingers roam lightly across it; the selfsame rust coloured terrain against calves' underlyings is smooth as creek stones. Outside there is space in every direction. Infinite number of vectors. Planets, asteroids, stars. Only one direction matters. Serenity goes to; she goes forward. Keeps flying. Ten souls, one big 'verse. (Passena is along her way.)
Keep flying. I am flying too.
The End
31/08/05