Tide of Shadows and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

jumped to life, adding its own erratic light to the room. A soft hiss, then a light kiss against the nape of my neck.
    Blackness.

    My eyelids strained to open, but remained closed as if stuck by glue. Voices filled the void.
    "Would you come to bed, John?" said a woman.
    "In a moment. Just another moment," said the familiar voice of the man with the glasses.
    The woman sighed. "Yes, yes. Another moment."
    "Sarah," the man whispered. It wasn’t my name, but somehow I knew he was talking about me.
    "John." Ice entered the woman's voice. She sounded weary and lonely. "Think of who she is, of what you're doing."
    "Sarah."
    "Please, John! Don't call her that. She’s broken beyond repair. You've broken her! She should be dead."
    Something crashed against the wall. The man huffed. My grandmama once read me a story about old warriors who fought bulls—pricking them with their metal weapons, taunting and enraging them, then killing the poor beasts for sport. The man's next word had all the power and anger of one of those bulls. "Out."
    "John…" said the woman. "Come here. Please." I couldn’t see her, but I pictured her holding her arms out before her, inviting the man into her embrace, into a place where whatever sins he carried could be momentarily forgotten.
    He didn’t move—didn't even speak.
    "John," she said more firmly. "She’s awake. Look at her eyes flutter. Can she hear us?"
    The man stomped through the room; he slapped his hand on the screen above the desk. I fell back into dreamless sleep.

    They tried to fix me.

    "The drugs are too much. You'll kill her."

    When next I awoke, I lay on my stomach. I was free to move, but now metal wings sprouted from my back. My first thought was not that they were absurd but that metal seemed a poor choice for tools meant for flight. My second was a wave of revulsion.
    "Do you like them?"
    I hadn’t noticed the man with the horn-rimmed glasses sitting in the chair. Startled, the disgust and panic washed away from me in a wave of curiosity.
    "I…" I did not know what to say.
    "You are special, Sarah. You are my little angel."
    That name again.
    He smiled, the first I'd seen from him. I was caught off guard by the kindness in his dark eyes. The smile just barely touched his lips, a small turn at one corner, but his eyes danced.
    Try as I might, I could not flap the wings and they would not fold; I could not stretch them to their full length nor draw them tight against my bare back. They were dead to me.
    "They don't work” was all I could think to say.
    "Not yet," he said. Some of the happiness left his eyes. "But soon. I will fix them. You will be the little angel of Tao Hua Yuan."
    Being an angel would be nice. And if these wings ever worked, I could leave this small room with its metal bed and leather straps. I’d fly the world over, and find my real father. But they were broken and needed fixing. I needed fixing.
    “I’d like to go back to sleep," I said.
    "Yes, my dear. Sleep well," the man said. The last thing I saw before sleep swept over me were his sad eyes and smiling lips.

    They broke me.

    I am no longer in the white room, but I am in a room. There on a small bed—quilt emblazoned with a dozen unicorns—is a small stuffed lion. Sebastian. I’d received Sebastian from my grandfather on the day I was born. I didn’t remember that, of course, but my mother had told me. I miss my mother. I don't remember how she looked anymore—just that she loved to smile.
    Sebastian looks lonely. He’s right where I left him, nestled amongst the fluffy pillows on my bed where I always put him before I leave for school each morning. The rest of my room is just as I remember it as well. A small data terminal built into my desk, a green light pulsing in the top corner. I must have homework due. Overdue now. Flowered wallpaper—the pattern my mother picked when we first moved from Istanbul to this new town. This new planet. I barely remember the room I'd had before that. I