Icons. Margaret Stohl

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       1

       HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

      “Dol? Are you okay?”

      The memory fades at the sound of his voice.

       Ro.

      I feel him somewhere in my mind, the nameless place where I see everything, feel everyone. The spark that is Ro. I hold on to it, warm and close, like a mug of steamed milk or a lit candle.

      And then I open my eyes and come back to him.

       Always.

      Ro’s here with me. He’s fine, and I’m fine.

       I’m fine.

      I think it, over and over, until I believe it. Until I remember what is real and what is not.

      Slowly the physical world comes into focus. I’m standing on a dirt trail halfway up the side of a mountain—staring down at the Mission, where the goats and pigs in the field below are small as ants.

      “All right?” Ro reaches toward me and touches my arm.

      I nod. But I’m lying.

      I’ve let the feelings—and the memories—overtake me again. I can’t do that. Everyone at the Mission knows I have a gift for feeling things—strangers, friends, even Ramona Jamona the pig, when she’s hungry—but it doesn’t mean I have to let the feelings control me.

      At least that’s what the Padre keeps telling me.

      I try to control myself, and usually I can. But I wish I didn’t feel anything, sometimes. Especially not when everything is so overwhelming, so unbearably sad.

      “Don’t disappear on me, Dol. Not now.” Ro locks his eyes on me and motions with his big tan hands. His brown-gold eyes flicker with fire and light under his dark tangle of hair. His face is all broad planes and rough angles—as solid as a brambled oak, softening only for me. He could climb halfway up the mountain again by now, or halfway down. Holding Ro back is like trying to stop an earthquake or a mud slide. Maybe a train.

      But not now. Now he waits. Because he knows me, and he knows where I’ve gone.

      Where I go.

      I stare up at the sky, spattered with bursts of gray rain and orange light. It’s hard to see past the wide-brimmed hat I stole off the hook behind the Padre’s office door. Still, the setting sun is in my eyes, pulsing from behind the clouds, bright and broken.

      I remember what we are doing and why we are here.

       My birthday. It’s my seventeenth birthday tomorrow.

      Ro has a present for me, but first we have to climb the hill. He wants to surprise me.

      “Give me a clue, Ro.” I pull myself up the hill after him, leaving a twisting trail of dried brush and dirt behind me.

      “Nope.”

      I turn to look down the mountain again. I can’t stop myself. I like how everything looks from up here.

      Peaceful. Smaller. Like a painting, or one of the Padre’s impossible puzzles, except there aren’t any missing pieces. In the distance below, I can see the yellowing patch of field that belongs to our Mission, then the fringe of green trees, then the deep blue wash of the ocean.

      Home.

      The view is so serene, you almost wouldn’t know about The Day. That’s why I like it here. If you don’t leave the Mission, you don’t have to think about it. The Day and the Icons and the Lords. The way they control us.

      How powerless we are.

      This far up the Tracks, away from the cities, nothing ever changes. This land has always been wild.

      A person can feel safe here.

       Safer.

      I raise my voice. “It’ll be getting dark soon.”

      He’s up the trail, once again. Then I hear a ripple through the brush, and the sound of rolling rock, and he lands behind me, nimble as a mountain goat.

      Ro smiles. “I know, Dol.”

      I take his calloused hand and relax my fingers into his. Instantly, I am flooded with the feeling of Ro—physical contact always makes our connection that much stronger.

      He is as warm as the sun behind me. As hot as I am cold. As rough as I am smooth. That’s our balance, just one of the invisible threads that tie us together.

      It’s who we are.

      My best-and-only friend and me.

      He rummages in his pocket, then pushes something into my hands, suddenly shy. “All right, I’ll hurry it up. Your first present.”

      I look down. A lone blue glass bead rolls between my fingers. A slender leather cord loops in a circle around it.

      A necklace.

      It’s the blue of the sky, of my eyes, of the ocean.

      “Ro,” I breathe. “It’s perfect.”

      “It reminded me of you. It’s the water, see? So you can always keep it with you.” His face reddens as he tries to explain, the words sticking in his mouth. “I know—how it makes you feel.”

       Peaceful. Permanent. Unbroken.

      “Bigger helped me with the cord. It used to be part of a saddle.” Ro has an eye for things like that, things other people overlook. Bigger, the Mission cook, is the same way, and the two of them are inseparable. Biggest, Bigger’s wife, tries her best to keep both of them out of trouble.

      “I love it.” I thread my arm around his neck in a rough hug. Not so much an embrace as a cuff of arms, the clench of friends and family.

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