The Slide
Chapter 1 | Audacity
“I love the sun,” Farha said as she angled into it, eyes closed, floppy hat atop her wild hair. Her deep purple skin, with tinges of green and red, glinted under the full force of the blazing light.
The Magistrate had allowed Uncle Tem (Private Tem — she reminded herself) and Farha onto his terrace just below the keep (the highest point of the castle-fort). It had a splendid view of the desert for miles to the west. As she crossed the Magistrate’s Office through the foyer-buffer to the terrace, she could feel his strange eyes regarding her as if he didn’t know the pigeon-hole where she should be placed.
“Screener,” Uncle Tem was annoyed as he tapped her shoulder with a bottle of sun-screener.
She sighed heavily. “Look at my skin. Even Science Lab says my skin has unusual natural defenses against harm from the sun. After all I am a Purple Being, unique amongst many.”
“Humor me. Besides, this gift is from the Magistrate. This is his terrace. He loves his protocol. So just do it.”
“You’ve become so military since they let you in,” she snarked, resisting, head tilted skyward. “The military, Uncle, really?”
“Screener,” the middle-aged Private Uncle Tem’s voice strained as he insisted.
She turned with her hands cupped, and sighed with exasperation. Tem squirted the goop into her palms, and she slapped her face violently with it. Then onto her neck and shoulders, into her scalp, slap, slap, slap, beat-beat.
“What about the satellite?” she shouted, her voice on fire with rebellious anger.
“What about the satellite?” she repeated, fomenting into a dramatic roar.
“What about the satellite?” some of the roar diminished as she finished the sun-screener ritual for her bare skin and strapped the goggles in place. About to make a sarcastic remark about the once rebellious Uncle Tem joining the military, she stopped her own mouth, biting her lower lip.
“Why ask what you already know the answer to?” Tem asked, frustrated and amused.
“Nine days, six hours and twenty minutes or so,” she said, laughing. “You know me so well, Uncle.”
In Fort Normandy, she and Tem had adjoining rooms. Farha knew it was a special favor to have a room of one’s own, even if it was a suite with a shared bathroom. Inland with her Aunt she had the first bedroom of her own on her twelfth birthday. It was the last birthday of childhood.
“Bonjour, Ma-Ma,” Farha Izem said quivering. Her Mother was as purple fading to brown skin as any Purple Berber, lyrical, and as graceful as a summer breeze. Mystery flowed about and around her.
“Oui, yes, sit. This is you at thirty-six months.” The mother indicated the toddler, quiet by Ma-Ma’s side. Farha, the toddler, looked up and smiled at her older self.
Little-one took her mother’s hand, and they strolled to the grand window of the upstairs bedroom.
“There across the sands beyond where we cannot see, beyond The Slide is called ‘High-Lands’ part of one of the two isles that are no more. Britain was closest, swallowed by sand and rock in a deep chasm. Only the mountainous region known as the ‘High-Lands’ as I previously mentioned, and a few tall mountains in Ire-Land and the large volcano. It is gone now and what remains, if we could see there is sand and rock rising to mountains surrounded by seas of sand. Your Papa is out there near to the Slide. I feel it. He is happy and in his element. He and his maps. I am happy for him and sad for us because we miss and long to be with him.”
She lifted the 3-year-old Farha into her arms and looked through the window at the stars above.
“See there,” Ma-Ma pointed at the bright star in the dome overhead. “That is the North Star.”
Farha woke in the darkened room for a moment and was dragged back into the dream world.
After her sixth birthday, her mother discovered a drawing that had fallen on the floor beneath Farha’s bureau. Ma-Ma was furious. She waved it in the air and tore it in half, throwing it up, away, and storming from the room. The precocious 6-year-old ran and picked it up. She went and put the pieces into her favorite book, vowing never to look at again.
Late that night there was a “thunk” followed by crashing glass.
The young child screamed as she ran through the broken glass towards the window. Farha captured the child in her arms and prevented her from climbing through the hole in the glass to follow their mother to her untimely death.
Farha awoke again in the narrow bed covered in sweat. She suppressed the scream in her throat, as she had many times in the past.
“Farha,” Tem called softly as he heard her mumbling, glazed by sleep.
“Papa, is that you?” Farha continued to sleep.
She looked down as if flying. I am dreaming I am a bird, desert birds of old flying at night, rising on the updrafts over the razor bare shard mountains she saw lightning on the ground.
How beautiful. Balls of light remained for snatches of seconds on the ground. Then many balls appeared for seconds longer in geometric shapes. Then one larger ball appeared and lit the shimmering wall just beyond it. The one larger ball seemed to smile at her, she thought, as she adjusted her wing-span to sail downwards. The shimmer was a rainbow of colors and she saw an opening in it. She flapped her wings as she approached the shimmer, about to enter —
“NO!” Tem boomed and stopped himself. In a commanding voice: “Farha, Wake Up!”
She jolted sitting upright in bed. “Damn, I was almost inside the Slide,” she said.
“It’s time.”
Chapter 2:
to be continued…
Rebecca Romanelli | DL Nemeril | Winston Huang | Marcus aka Gregory Maidman | Elle Beau ❇︎ | Filiz Özer | Melanie J. | madmess’s thoughts | Dr Mehmet Yildiz | Joseph Lieungh | Alison Hollingsead | Matthew Nashira | I. Trudie Palmer | Ravyne Hawke | Alberto García 🚀🚀🚀 | OrlaK | Mark Tulin | Shirley Willett | Alan Lew | David Price | Diana C. | Blaine Coleman | Michelle Roussin |
Please consider this chapter and the subsequent chapters a first draft of either a novelette or novella. Thank you.
