THE SNOW STOPS ON SATURDAY NIGHT. THE SCRAPING sound of shovels against asphalt fills the night air. From the window I can see the faint silhouettes of residents throwing snow to less cumbersome places, readying themselves for the morning walk for Sunday obligations. There’s a certain tranquillity to the town at work on a quiet night, everyone bound by the same cause, and I wish I was out there among them. And then the bedtime bell tolls. In the room fourteen girls find their beds within the minute, and the lights are shut off.
The second I close my eyes the dream begins. I stand in a field of flowers on a warm summer day. To my right, in the distance, the outline of a jagged mountain range stands against the backdrop of the setting sun; to my left lies the sea. A girl dressed in black, with raven hair and striking gray eyes, appears out of nowhere. She wears a smile, both fierce and confident. It’s just the two of us. Then a great disturbance kicks up behind me, as though an isolated earthquake has just begun, and the ground is split open and torn apart. I don’t turn to see what’s actually happening. The girl lifts her hand, beckoning me to take it, her eyes locked on mine. I reach for it. My eyes open.
Light streams in through the windows. While it feels as though minutes have passed, in reality the whole night has gone by. I shake my head free of the dream. Sunday is the day of rest, though ironically for us it’s the busiest day of the week, starting with a long Mass.
Ostensibly the large Sunday crowd is because of religious devotion within the community, but really it’s because of El Festín, the grand dinner that follows Mass. All of us who live here must work it. My place is in the cafeteria line. It’s only after dinner that we’re finally free. If I’m lucky we’ll finish by four, then we’re not due back until the sun sets. This time of year it comes a little after six.
We rush to the showers, quickly bathe, brush our teeth and our hair, then dress in our Sunday best, identical black-and-white outfits that leave only our hands and heads showing. When most of the other girls have fled the room, Adelina walks in. She stands in front of me and fixes the neck of my tunic. It makes me feel much younger than I really am. I can hear the throng of people filing into the nave. Adelina remains silent. So do I. I look at the gray streaks in her auburn hair, which I hadn’t noticed before. There are wrinkles at her eyes and mouth. She’s forty-two but looks ten years older.
“I had a dream about a girl with raven hair and gray eyes who reached her hand out to me,” I say, breaking the silence. “She wanted me to take it.”
“Okay,” she says, unsure of why I’m telling her about a dream.
“Do you think she could be one of us?”
She gives the collar a final tug. “I think you shouldn’t read into your dreams so much.”
I want to argue with her, but I’m not sure what to say. So instead I utter, “It felt real.”
“Some dreams do.”
“But you said a long time ago that on Lorien we could sometimes communicate with each other over long distances.”
“Yes, and right after that I would read you stories about a wolf who could blow down houses and a goose who laid golden eggs.”
“Those were fairy tales.”
“It’s all one big fairy tale, Marina.”
I grit my teeth. “How can you say that? We both know it’s not a fairy tale. We both know where we came from and why we’re here. I don’t know why you act as if you didn’t come from Lorien and you don’t have a duty to teach me.”
She puts her hands behind her back and looks at the ceiling. “Marina, since I’ve been here, since we’ve been here, we’ve been fortunate to learn the truth about creation and where we came from and what our real mission is on Earth. And that’s all found in the Bible.”
“And the Bible isn’t a fairy tale?”
Her shoulders stiffen. She furrows her brows and flexes her jaw.
“Lorien isn’t a fairy tale,” I say before she can respond, and, using telekinesis, I lift a pillow from a nearby bed and spin it in the air. Adelina does something she’s never done before: she slaps me. Hard. I drop the pillow and press my hand to my stinging cheek with my mouth wide-open.
“Don’t you dare let them see you do that!” she says furiously.
“What I did right there, that’s not a fairy tale. I am not part of a fairy tale. You are my Cêpan, and you are not part of a fairy tale.”
“Call it what you will,” she says.
“But haven’t you read the news? You know the boy in Ohio is one of us; you have to! He could be our only chance!”
“Our only chance at what?” she asks.
“A life.”
“And what do you call this?”
“Spending our days living the lies of an alien race is no life,” I say.
She shakes her head. “Give it up, Marina,” she says, and walks away. I have no choice but to follow.
Marina. The name sounds so normal now, so me. I don’t think twice when Adelina hisses the name at me or when one of the other girls in the orphanage yells it on the way out the school doors, waving my forgotten math book. But it hasn’t always been my name. Back when we were aimlessly looking for a warm meal or a bed, back before Spain and Santa Teresa, before Adelina was Adelina, I had been Geneviève. Adelina was Odette. Those were our French names.
“We should change our names with every new country,” Adelina had whispered when she was Signy and we were in Norway, where our ship landed after months at sea. She’d chosen Signy because it had been written on the woman’s shirt behind the counter.
“What should my name be?” I’d asked.
“Whatever you want it to be,” she’d said. We’d been at a café in the middle of a bleak village, enjoying the heat from the mug of hot chocolate we’d shared. Signy had stood and retrieved the weekend’s newspaper from a nearby table. On the front page was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Blond hair, high cheekbones, deep blue eyes. Her name was Birgitta. My name had become Birgitta.
Even when we were on a train and the countries zipped past the window like trees, we’d always change our names, if just for a few hours. Yes, it was to stay hidden from the Mogadorians or anyone else who might be following us, but it was also the one thing that raised our spirits among so much disappointment. I’d thought it was so much fun, I wish we’d traveled over Europe several times. In Poland I was Minka and she chose Zali. She was Fatima in Denmark; I was Yasmin. I had two names in Austria: Sophie and Astrid. She fell in love with Emmalina.
“Why Emmalina?” I’d asked.
She laughed. “I don’t know exactly. I guess I love that it’s almost two names in one. Either one is beautiful, but you smash them together and you get something extraordinary.”
In fact, I wonder now if that was the last time I heard her laugh. Or the last time we hugged or made proclamations about our destinies. I believe it was the last time I sensed she cared about being my Cêpan or what happened to Lorien—what happened to me.
We arrive at Mass just before it begins. The only available seats are in the very last row, which is where I prefer to sit anyhow. Adelina shuffles to the front where the Sisters sit. Father Marco, the priest, begins with an opening prayer in his always-somber voice, and most of his words are muffled beyond recognition by the time they reach me. I like it this way, sitting through Mass with detached apathy. I try not to think about Adelina smacking me, filling my mind instead with what I will do when El Festín finally ends. None of the snow has melted, but I’m determined to make it to the cave anyway. I have something new to paint, and I want to finish the picture of John Smith that I started last week.
Mass drags on forever, or at least it feels that way, with rites, liturgies, communion, readings, prayers, rituals. When we reach the final prayer I’m exhausted and don’t even bother pretending to pray like I normally do, and instead sit there with my head lifted and eyes open, scanning the backs of the heads of those in attendance. Almost all of them are familiar. One man sleeps upright in his pew, arms crossed and chin touching his chest. I watch him until something in his dream startles him awake with a grunt. Several heads turn his way as he gathers his bearings. I can’t help but smile; and as I look away, my eyes find Sister Dora scowling at me. I drop my head, close my eyes, and feign prayer, mouthing the words that Father Marco recites up front, but I know I’ve been caught. It’s what Sister Dora thrives on. She goes out of her way to catch us in the act of doing something we shouldn’t.
Prayer concludes with the sign of the cross, finally bringing an end to Mass. I’m up out of my seat before anyone else, and I hurry from the nave to the kitchen. Sister Dora may be the largest among all the Sisters, but she shows surprising agility when it’s needed, and I don’t want to give her the chance to catch me. If she doesn’t, I might escape punishment. And I do, because when she enters the cafeteria five minutes later as I’m peeling potatoes beside a gangly fourteen-year-old named Paola and her twelve-year-old sister, Lucia, she only glares at me.
“What’s up with her?” Paola asks.
“She caught me smiling during Mass.”
“Good thing you weren’t paddled,” Lucia says out of the corner of her mouth.
I nod and go back to what I’m doing. As fleeting as they are, it’s these small moments that bring us girls together, the fact that we share a common enemy. When I was younger, I thought commonalities like this, and of being orphaned and living under this same tyrannical roof, would unite us all as immediate and lifelong friends. But really it only worked to further divide us, creating small factions within our already small group—the pretty girls huddling together (La Gorda excepted, but still a part of their crowd), the smart girls, the athletic ones, the young ones—until I was left all alone.
A half hour later when everything’s ready, we carry the food from the kitchen to the serving line. The crowd of waiting people clap. At the back of the line I see my favorite person in all of Santa Teresa: Héctor Ricardo. His clothes are dirty and wrinkled, and his hair is tousled. He has bloodshot eyes, an almost scarlet complexion to his face and cheeks. Even from as far away as I am I notice he has a slight shake in each hand, as he always does on Sundays—the only day in the week he swears off drinking. He looks especially rough today, though when he finally approaches, he holds his tray out and fixes on his face the most optimistic smile he can muster.
“And how are you, my dear Queen of the sea?” he asks.
I curtsy in return. “I’m doing well, Héctor. And you?”
He shrugs, then says, “Life is but a fine wine, to be sipped and savored.”
I laugh. Héctor always has some old adage to share.
I first met Héctor when I was thirteen. He had been sitting outside the lone café on Calle Principal drinking a bottle of wine by himself. It was midafternoon, and I had been on my way home from school. Our eyes met as I passed.
“Marina, as of the sea,” he had said, and I’d found it odd that he knew my name, though I shouldn’t have since I’d seen him every week at the church pretty much since the day I’d arrived. “Come keep a drunk man company a few minutes.”
I did. I’m not sure why. Maybe because there’s something entirely agreeable about Héctor. He makes me feel relaxed, and doesn’t pretend to be somebody he isn’t like so many other people do. He exudes the attitude of “This is who I am; take it or leave it.”
That first day we had sat and talked long enough for him to finish one bottle of wine and order a second.
“You stick with Héctor Ricardo,” he’d said when I had to get back to the convent. “I’ll take care of you; it’s in my name. The Latin root of Hector means ‘to defend and hold fast.’ And Ricardo means ‘power and bravery,’” he’d said, thumping his chest twice with his right fist. “Héctor Ricardo will take care of you!”
I could tell he meant it.
He’d gone on. “Marina. ‘Of the sea.’ That’s what your name means; did you know that?”
I’d told him I did not. I’d wondered what Birgitta meant. And Yasmin. What Emmalina was rooted in.
“That means you are Santa Teresa’s own Sea Queen,” he’d said with a sideways grin.
I’d laughed at him. “I think you’ve been drinking too much, Héctor Ricardo.”
“Yes,” he’d replied. “I am the town drunk, dear Marina. But don’t let that fool you. Héctor Ricardo is a defender all the same. And besides, show me a man without vice and I’ll show you one without virtue!”
Years later, he’s one of the few people I can call a friend.
It takes twenty-five minutes for the few hundred people to receive their due today; and after the last person leaves the line, it’s our turn to eat, sitting away from the others. As a group we eat as fast as we can, knowing that the quicker we clean up and get everything put away, the sooner we’ll be on our own.
Fifteen minutes later the five of us who work the line are scraping pots and pans and wiping counters. At its best, cleanup takes an hour, and that’s only if everyone leaves the cafeteria after they’re done eating, which rarely happens. As we’re cleaning, when I know the others aren’t looking, I throw into a bag the nonperishable items I plan to take to the cave today: dried fruits and berries, nuts, a can of tuna fish, a can of beans. This has become another weekly tradition of mine. For a long time I convinced myself I was doing it so I could snack when painting the cave’s walls. But the truth is I’m creating a stockpile of food in case the worst arrives and I have to hide. And by the worst, I mean them.